By Hook Or By Crook
by hiddenhibernian
Summary: "Standards at the Ministry have clearly slipped from abominable to abysmal during my absence, if this half-baked effort to bring Avery to justice is any indication." Hermione Granger never gives up, even when she really ought to. Fugitives from justice, international intrigue and dead men offering Jaffa cakes will change nothing in that regard. EWE
1. Chapter 1 - Hooked in

**For Pretty Desdemona in the HPCF Summer Fic Exchange.  
**

**Heaps of thanks to At Some Actor's West Side Loft, who was a wonderful beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own. **

**Disclaimer: I'm not JK Rowling - this is intended as homage to her works and no money has exchanged hands. **

**Warning: References to domestic abuse**

* * *

**Chapter 1 **

**Hooked in**

**-oOo-**

* * *

Hermione winced at the bruises on the pale, haggard face looking back at her in the mirror. She had really thought things were going so well last night, right up until when they suddenly weren't.

The worst bruises were the ones that showed. By now she had enough practice in covering them up with make up, but she could never be quite sure that it would last all day. The very last thing she wanted was to attract unwanted attention. There was nothing well-meaning strangers could do for her, other than making her life even more difficult.

Right; there was no use feeling sorry for herself. She had made her bed, and now she had to lie in it. Gingerly, she rubbed in a good-sized lump of concealer on her cheek, watching the bruise in the mirror slowly fade.

Above her, the fluorescent lighting flickered, bathing her in an unflattering greenish light. She looked as if she was about a hundred. Not for the first time, Hermione wondered what on earth she was doing here. When examining her decisions in isolation they all looked eminently logical, but once she put them all together she was left with the conclusion that she was a complete idiot.

After putting the final touches to her makeup she reached into her dress and fished out a small bottle, swallowing a sip with a slight grimace before she let it disappear into the folds of her clothing again. Oddly, there was no trace of the outline of the bottle where the dress was skimming her hips. An observer, had there been any in the dingy bathroom with the flaking linoleum, would have been decidedly puzzled.

The day wore on. It was hot. The trailer park was quiet, and Avery didn't seem to be inclined to talk. He only grunted occasionally, mostly when he wanted her to fetch him another bottle of beer from the fridge. Gilbert, she reminded herself for want of something better to think of. Gilbert, or Bertie; not Avery. Calling him by his surname in her own head was a tiny act of rebellion, the only resistance she would allow herself today.

Despite the heat Hermione stayed inside, lounging on the couch watching an endless succession of human flotsam and jetsam parade in front of talk show hosts and self-important judges. She would give anything for just half an hour with a book. Almost anything, she corrected herself immediately. Almost anything, except give in.

When the evening came she heated some cans and they ate in silence in front of the TV. It got cooler as the sun set and darkness fell over the surrounding trailers, and Hermione was grateful for the warmth from the threadbare blanket on her narrow pull-out bed. Avery slept on the couch just a few yards from her. Even when he started snoring and she knew he was fast asleep, she couldn't relax.

She was still in a foreign country, on the other side of an ocean from all the people she loved. In the stillness of the night, the memory of what was supposed to be her lifeline was no comfort; it was an anchor weighing her down. The little scraps of parchment she had burnt after painstakingly memorising the phone numbers on them were just a sharp reminder of what she had given up.

Hermione refused to cry, but as she was lying wide awake listening to the cicadas singing in the bushes outside defiance wasn't much comfort.

The next few weeks passed as quickly as time could pass when you were stuck with a man you hated in a Midwestern trailer park, trying to eke out a living on nothing much. Avery had roused himself from the apathy that inevitably followed one of his fits of rage, and started disappearing on mysterious errands in the evening.

When he was home Hermione tried to pick the right moment to talk to him, to nudge him in the right direction. She knew well that there was no point making an outright suggestion; he would probably do the exact opposite, just to spite her. Yet, he was mercurial enough that she couldn't be absolutely sure, and so reverse psychology had to be ruled out too.

One night, something finally happened, breaking the maddening routine of listless days and sweltering nights. Avery took her out to the new bar he had started going to at night. At first Hermione didn't quite understand why he insisted that she would accompany him for once, but afterwards it became clear that he wanted her opinion on his 'business partner', Logan Hankwell.

Frankly, it came as a surprise that he had any respect for her judgement at all.

From the moment they entered the bar, with its agonisingly slowly rotating ceiling fan and the distant buzz of flies in the background, the stale smell of beer almost made her retch. A tall man was waiting for them at a table in the gloom on the other side of the bar, mercifully placed away from the flickering neon lights spelling out the names of cheap liquor brands.

Unusually, Hankwell paid Hermione almost as much attention as he did Avery, insisting on ordering her a drink and even asking for a new glass when hers turned out to have a dead fly in it. When he clasped her hand in greeting, sincerity shone in his eyes. He didn't overdo it either, not making the mistake of pulling out her chair or flirting with her. Avery seemed content to sit back and watch them for a few minutes, before he got bored with the muted baseball match on TV and turned the conversation to horse racing.

Hankwell was equally polished when speaking to Avery, subtly deferring to him without it becoming too obvious. Hermione watched her ice cubes slowly melt and tried not to let on that she was itching to get out of there.

It had nothing to do with fear.

Hermione had seen pure evil in men; Hankwell didn't even come close. Mindless violence wouldn't be his area either - she had recognised immediately that the man was a scammer, pure and simple, and judged that he should be about a match for Avery. That was before they started talking; within thirty seconds, she had known that she had been wrong. Hankwell was a talented con artist and probably wasted on this place.

What on earth could he want with Avery?

It turned out that Hermione had underestimated the value of a flawless British accent in exile. Avery's accent wouldn't even sound all that posh in Britain; there were hardly any cut-glass vowels in the wizarding world, there simply weren't enough of them to have a plethora of accents the way the Muggles did. Everyone went to the same school anyway, so pure-blood wizards tended to sound rather similar whether they were Weasleys or Malfoys.

Oddly that probably made Avery's accent even more useful in America, since a Wooster-like drawl would have been difficult to understand. Additionally, Avery had been brought up with pure-blood manners reminiscent of Victorian customs in the Muggle world, which sealed the deal; the only difficulty would be to persuade him to be charming to people he considered beneath him.

To Hankwell's credit, he appeared to have discovered that the key to that particular conundrum was money.

Back in the trailer, Hermione was very careful when Avery asked for her opinion.

"I don't know, dear. Would you consider him reliable?"

"That's what I'm asking you." 'Stupid bint' hung in the air, but mercifully remained unspoken.

"He seems a little- slippery, doesn't he? I think I'd insist on getting paid in advance if I were you."

"Right," he muttered. "But would you go into business with him?"

"Well, I wouldn't know what sort of business it would be, so it's hard to say…" She let it hang in the air, but he didn't bite. Avery went to bed without saying anything else, and in the morning he disappeared again. Hermione tried not to scream in frustration as the door to the trailer swung shut. He had actually listened to her, only to clam up again just as quickly.

"Here," he slurred late one night the same week, as he interrupted her watching another episode of some Latin soap. Hermione was honestly beginning to fear that her brain would start to rot soon. "Here, take thish." He shoved a bunch of ten dollar notes into her hand, and she stared at them. It was more money than she had seen for months, much more than the household money in the tea jar on the shelf above the sofa.

"What- Where is it from?" she asked curiously, before she had time to gather her wits and remember that she couldn't just throw a question like that at him.

"It'sh from me and Hank-" he told her drunkenly, too far gone to register her interest in what didn't concern her. "Shpend something on yourself, you look like the shlappers around here. Doll yourself up a bit," he mumbled, before collapsing on the sofa, almost landing on her.

A few weeks later it all came to a head. Avery didn't bring back any more money, but he managed to get drunk on a nightly basis so he must have got more from Hankwell. Every morning he would put on his good suit and disappear, not returning until late. His habits became so predictable that Hermione almost cracked and tuned into BBC America, before she copped on and told herself sternly that she just couldn't take the risk. She continued watching _Days of Our Lives_ instead, trying to recall old poems and bits of Shakespeare in her head while tuning out the nonsense.

It was either that or raving insanity.

Lulled into false comfort by the new routine, she was taken completely unaware when Avery returned in the early evening one day. Silently thanking the gods she hadn't yielded to temptation and turned on something decent to watch on the telly, she turned around in genuine surprise as he walked in through the door. The look on his face chased every thought about daytime television out of her head, and fear and a little adrenaline hit her instead.

"Hankwell is gone," Avery announced through clenched teeth, and she could tell he was completely sober. Somehow, that made her more apprehensive. "Packed up and gone, and not a sign of the money he owes me!"

He looked challengingly at Hermione, and she desperately weighed up her options. No, she couldn't remain quiet; she would have to say something – but what?

"At least you got the advance, dear," she tried, and saw immediately that it had been the wrong choice.

The last thing she remembered was a sickly crunch and how she almost wanted to laugh at the indignity of it all. Who would have thought that this was where she would end up?

* * *

"Lucy? Lucy, it's time to wake up!" a voice hissed in Hermione's ear, and its timbre seemed to go straight to her spine. Reflexively she tried to sit up only to fall back again, her head swimming.

"Good. Now, don't do anything idiotic and lie still," the voice commanded, and suddenly she knew she had heard it before. Something was slightly off, but she couldn't put her finger on it. It would have helped if she could think; her head felt like it was filled with porridge and she could hardly manage to open her eyes. Something cold landed on her forehead and she sighed thankfully.

"There, now," her unknown benefactor said curtly. "Please try and sit up -" she felt an arm behind her shoulders, easing her way up, "and drink this-"

She sunk back into nothingness again, slowly falling from the irritating light that hurt her eyes and the insistent voice.

* * *

The next time she woke up she remembered both who and where she was, and why it would be unwise to betray that she wasn't who she was supposed to be. The immediate past was a little hazier, and she still felt as if her head was swimming. Cautiously, she opened her eyes.

A dead man was looking back at her.

Glittering black eyes, a hooked nose, long black hair with streaks of grey – it was unmistakably Severus Snape. The only thing she didn't recognise was his expression; he looked mildly concerned, which was rather different from the usual sneering contempt she remembered from Hogwarts.

He was leaning over her, his hair tied back behind his neck. To Hermione's surprise, he was dressed in Muggle jeans and a Niagara Falls sweatshirt; somehow, it surprised her more than the fact that he was alive, perhaps because it was easier to wrap her sluggish brain around.

"Prof-" she started, before recalling herself. "You're alive!" she burst out, and a familiar expression of exasperation settled on his features.

"Obviously."

Hearing Snape's voice again, seeing him act like himself, finally opened the floodgates and she burst into tears. While she was racked with big, heavy sobs he watched, his expression inscrutable. When she had quieted down he offered her a handkerchief. The noise of Hermione blowing her nose seemed to echo around them, as she realised how completely she had betrayed herself.

"You're not Lucinda Avery," Snape stated, not even bothering to ask.

"No," she admitted, trying to calculate how much she could tell him.

"Who are you?"

"Hermione Granger," she responded promptly, and he flinched, almost imperceptibly. "Oh, come on, sir. I'm not going to start waving my hand around in the air." The corner of his mouth quirked upwards, very slightly.

"That hardly constitutes conclusive evidence."

"The Polyjuice will wear off in… What time is it?" Snape nodded towards an old-fashioned alarm clock hanging on the wall, and for the first time since she woke up Hermione took in her surroundings. They were obviously in another trailer; she knew the tells by now. This one was scrupulously clean, which was a welcome change, but just as shabby as the one she had been stuck in with Avery. "If you can wait a few hours, you can see for yourself."

Fortunately, she hadn't expected Snape to be all enthusiastic about an enhancement of Polyjuice lasting longer than the customary hour, so his lack of amazement didn't disappoint. If the Department of Mysteries had come up with a way of doing it, she was fairly certain that Severus Snape would have too.

"Again, you fail to convince me."

Hermione had been afraid that would be the case. She wracked her brains for something that could persuade him that she was who she said she was. What theoretically was the obvious choice seemed like an extremely bad idea when faced with a living and breathing version of the man. There was no way she could imagine that it would end well if she resorted to bringing up the memories Snape had given to Harry as he was dying on the floor of the Shrieking Shack.

Hermione hadn't actually seen them; Harry had guarded them very jealously, insistent on protecting the man's privacy. However, he had to talk to someone about what he had seen and it certainly wasn't going to be Ron, so she had a fair idea of what the memories contained. Disclosing that she knew the most guarded matters of his heart would probably ensure that Snape would have nothing more to do with her, and, besides, she happened to think he deserved more than that. Much more.

Hermione almost burst out laughing when she realized what she would have to confess.

"Bicorn horn and Boomslang skin," she said. "It was a Thursday, I think, and Harry threw a firework into Goyle's cauldron as a decoy when I nipped into your private stores." She made a wry smile. "I'd offer to pay you back, but as it happens I've no money on me at the moment."

Anger and something that looked very much like sinister satisfaction were warring on Snape's face.

"I knew Potter was up to something!"

"Well, sir, strictly speaking I was. Harry was just covering for me."

Snape was examining her intently, and she wondered if he saw anything of Hermione Granger in the worn features of Lucinda Avery, sister and daughter of Death Eaters.

"May I ask you to do the same, sir?" She may as well verify that he really was who he appeared to be. He didn't ask what she was referring to or attempt to demur, which reinforced her belief that this really was Snape. She had never really been in doubt, but it didn't hurt to be certain.

Despite the fact that Snape had been a regular visitor to Grimmauld Place while she had spent the better part of a summer there, and that he had taught her three days a week for six years, most of their interactions had been in public. Snape had been silent for rather a long time, obviously at a loss for something only Hermione would be aware of, when she remembered something.

"Do you remember, sir- In third year, I think. We were making an Erasing Potion, and Neville dropped a whole box of eye of newt into his-"

"I couldn't possibly forget Longbottom nearly blowing up the castle, Miss Granger, even if it was a rather frequent occurrence. I gave five points to Gryffindor for averting a catastrophe, if I recall correctly."

If Hermione hadn't spent the last months impersonating Gilbert Avery's sister, Snape addressing her as if she was a first-year student might have been slightly annoying. As it was, she wished the Ministry of Magic had stretched to equipping her with a miniature tape recorder so she could have listened to him saying her real name in that smooth, crisp voice over and over again.

"And then you took fifty from Neville," Hermione added, remembering Snape awarding her the points under his breath as he leaned in to vanish the remnants of Neville's cauldron, forced into containment by Hermione's protective charm to stop it from blowing them all up. Not even Neville had heard him, and in the general flurry about the fifty points lost no one else had noticed the five extra ones. Hermione had remembered, though – it was almost the only time Snape had given her points for anything at all, so she was hardly going to forget.

"It was either that or euthanasia. How that dunderhead made it to adulthood in one piece is an enduring mystery to me. No doubt he is busy procreating now; gods have mercy on the poor sods who'll have to teach his offspring."

"Is that why you didn't tell anyone that you survived – because you wanted a change of scenery?"

Snape cast her a contemptuous look, but Hermione had only intended it as an opening gambit. She had never been able to resist a mystery, and this one was juicy enough to distract her even from her aching limbs and sore head, and the bleakness of her immediate situation.

Only then did it occur to Hermione to wonder why she was propped up on the bed in what must be Severus Snape's bedroom.


	2. Chapter 2 - A Crooked Man

**This story has been much improved by the kind offices of ****At Some Actor's West Side Loft**  


* * *

**Chapter 2**

**A Crooked Man**

**-oOo-**

* * *

"What are you doing here, Miss Granger?" Snape was looking down his rather long nose at her, using his classroom voice. It seemed rather at odds with their surroundings. The linoleum floor and flaking wallpaper in the dilapidated trailer was probably older than Hermione, and they hadn't aged well. Outside, insects she had no names for sang and chirruped and tweeted, reminding her that they both were very far away from home.

"I should have thought that was obvious."

"Do enlighten me." His sneer hadn't become less vicious in the decade since she had last seen it.

"I'm impersonating Lucinda Avery," she said, trying to look as dignified as she could. Wearing someone else's body, still feeling mangled physically and emotionally, she feared it didn't amount to much. Apparently Snape agreed.

"Really, Miss Granger. Clearly I never would have reached that conclusion on my own."

Well, she wasn't going to play his little game; if he wanted to know he would damn well have to ask. Her glare seemed to have communicated her stance adequately without requiring her to verbalise it; she really had to remember that he was an accomplished Legilimens.

"Why would you undertake such an endeavour?" His heavy sigh seemed to convey that he was playing along momentarily, but on a sufferance.

"That's the real question, isn't it? And I'm not sure how much I can tell you," she said thoughtfully.

"Standards at the Ministry have clearly slipped from abominable to abysmal during my absence, if this half-baked effort to bring Avery to justice is any indication."

Listen to what he isn't saying, Hermione told herself as she struggled to keep her face expressionless. Even if he didn't live in England Snape could easily have found out that she worked for the Ministry, and it was hardly unexpected in any case. She was under cover, in a country whose wizarding population was known for its isolationist tendencies and strict controls on magic. Furthermore, she was pretending to be the sister of a war criminal and former Death Eater on the run from the British Ministry; it wasn't a wild assumption that Hermione Granger might want to bring him to justice.

It was simple, really. Snape had figured it out in less than five minutes, however, so Nagini's attack clearly hadn't affected his intellectual prowess.

"Correct, sir. Although I would argue that it isn't half-baked."

"Since you have failed to express any interest in how you ended up in your present situation, it falls to me to point out that being beaten unconscious by the Death Eater you are supposed to be subjugating hardly constitutes a resounding success."

Well, Hermione had been working up to asking him how she came to be here, wherever here was, so she was rather grateful that he had introduced the topic.

"Why am I here, sir? Where are we, by the way?"

"Hearthside trailer park, just outside Detroit." She was still in the same place as where she had started the evening, then.

"And why am I here?" She didn't bother asking where she was in the trailer park; Snape must have rented a trailer, too. Somehow Hermione didn't think he was here because he had run out of other options, like a majority of the other residents she had come across, but that would have to wait for the moment.

"Because you clearly were in over your head."

"You didn't even know it was me," she pointed out.

"It is generally considered a basic tenet of civil society that bystanders will intervene when they see a man using his fists to render a woman insensate."

Hermione snorted; not if they thought they would get in the way of said fists, they wouldn't.

"You know Lucinda Avery," she pointed out, suddenly recalling that Snape had been calling her by name as she was waking up.

"I knew her, a very long time ago."

"From Hogwarts?"

"Losing your grip, Miss Granger? You should know we weren't at school at the same time." She had known; she just didn't quite know how to ask if her real assumption was correct. Yet again, he seemed to read her mind even though she had been careful to keep her eyes slightly averted.

"Yes, we met because her brother was a Death Eater. Lucinda was happy to support the cause with whatever dwindling funds she still had at her disposal."

"And were you friends?" Hermione asked hesitatingly; she certainly wasn't fool enough to believe that Snape had harboured any sort of amorous feelings for the unprepossessing Miss Avery. It was difficult to imagine anyone less likely to appeal to him.

"We shared some interests." So they had been friendly, then; it explained why Snape had used a nickname when he was trying to wake her up. According to the notes Hermione had memorised, Lucinda had been called Lucy by her family and some of her school friends; the woman hadn't had many close friends after she had left school. It was one reason why her disappearance to join her fugitive brother after the end of the second war hadn't been noted immediately; once people noticed, the trail had already gone cold and the Averys had disappeared into obscurity.

Obviously, they hadn't been quite obscure enough if Snape had found them, too.

"How come you're here, sir?"

"Maybe I wish render assistance to my erstwhile comrade-in-arms," he said blandly. Hermione didn't even bother responding to that. Her head was still sore, but she could feel her wits returning and the pieces were slowly falling into place.

"Avery was talking about contacting an 'old friend' weeks ago, someone who's still got money – That's how you find them, isn't it? That must be how Rockwood got caught in Cambodia - it was you!" Snape's expression was utterly uninterested, and she knew she was on the right track. "Word gets passed around that someone still is looking after the old gang, and if someone bites you come calling. What do you do to them?" It was frighteningly clear to her now: the Death Eaters still in hiding were generally poor and suspicious, so using money to tempt them into coming out of the woodwork would work if the information came from someone they trusted.

Snape's look of studied indifference could have won prizes.

"All right, never mind. This anonymous benefactor wouldn't be Lucius Malfoy, by any chance? He's the only one who fits- Oh, and that's how you survived, isn't it? You set it up with Malfoy somehow-"

"Your imagination is simply boundless, Miss Granger," he commented with obvious distaste. "You cannot have a scrap of evidence for any of your flights of fancy."

"Don't need to, do I? It all makes sense, sir, so unless you want to tell me the truth I rather think I'll stick with my assumptions." Snape looked like Neville had done something unspeakable to his Potions lab, so she guessed that a compelling alternative explanation fitting all the known facts wouldn't be forthcoming.

"What is your plan of action, Miss Granger?" he asked, entirely disregarding the previous few minutes of their conversation. "Or have you opted for the usual Gryffindor modus operandi of making it up as you go along?"

Hermione didn't really have to think about it; ever since she had opened her eyes and seen who it was, she had known that she trusted Snape, would trust him with her life. It was the least she owed him after having left him to die, and she was suddenly achingly grateful that it wasn't too late.

"By hook or by crook, I'll get Avery to cross the border to Canada. I can't use magic-"

"I'm not an imbecile, I know that the wards at the border would stop you. To say nothing about how much trouble you would be in if you used unauthorised magic in the United States."

"And I can't exactly drug him and drive him across either." Glumly, Hermione contemplated the situation. The recurring wars in Europe and the rest of the world had made wizarding America retract into itself, in a completely opposite reaction to its Muggle equivalent. Anyone wishing to practice magic within the United States had to register their wand, and transgressions were severely punished.

"You don't think there will be a bit of a strain on the Anglo-American relationship, once it becomes apparent that the British Ministry has kidnapped Avery so he can be extradited?" Snape asked, his tone making clear just how sarcastic his question was.

"Yes, I expect there will be a dreadful fuss!" Hermione admitted cheerfully. "Kingsley says he doesn't care, though, and as long as the Americans can't prove that the Ministry was involved, there's not really anything they can do."

"So they just dumped you here on, hoping you will somehow manage to drag Avery across the border on your own? The Auror Office wasn't exactly composed of the sharpest knives in the drawer in my day either, but it seems like a particularly poorly thought-out plan. "

"As opposed to yours, then? Which was what, exactly?" In Hermione's quick tally of Death Eaters who had been caught on the run, most had either been found dead by apparently natural causes or been tangled up with the Muggle authorities in some way. Some very nasty prisons out there had even nastier inmates than they thought. "I'd rather not live in a country where the Ministry condones slipping untraceable poison in someone's morning tea, thank you very much. Besides, we're hoping it will send a signal to the other Death Eaters on the run – But that won't be necessary, will it?" she asked, slowly figuring it out. "The reason so many of the survivors haven't been found is because you got to them first, isn't it?"

Snape's expression was the very definition of inscrutable.

"Never mind," Hermione sighed, realising that he would hardly admit to murder to a Ministry official. Even if he probably knew that she would never turn him in, for at least three completely different reasons. "So will you help me, then? Or are you heading on now?"

"Miss Granger, am I to understand that you're going _back_?" It was very seldom she had seen Snape drop his mask to such an extent.

"Yes, I am." If Harry or Ron had been there, they would have seen that there was no persuading her to change her chosen course of action. Avery was a piece of scum and Hermione would bring him to justice, if it was the last thing she did.

Snape suddenly looked tired, and brushed his hand across his face. For the first time it occurred to Hermione to wonder what time it was; by the pale morning light slipping in through the cracks in the rotting blinds she could tell it was close to dawn.

"You cannot possibly be serious," he said, in a tone that suggested that he knew only too well that she was.

"What's the alternative? The Americans won't extradite him or detain him, as long as he doesn't commit any crimes here. As soon as he finds out that we're on his tracks, he'll slip away again."

Snape sighed, and Hermione recognised the unusually unguarded look in his eyes. She had seen it in the eyes of her friends after the Battle of Hogwarts, and in the mirror just after the war. It was a look that said enough, no longer, I cannot bear any more of this. Ten years ago, she had seen it in the mirror often enough.

A scrawny, neglected child with eyes too old for his years rose to the surface of her memories; suddenly, Hermione understood quite how much she was asking him for.

"You don't have to stay- I mean, I've no claim on you, it's not like you owe us anything-"

"I'll stay," he said, and that seemed to be that. The shutters went down again.

* * *

There were practicalities to be attended to; it would soon be six o'clock in the morning, and for several reasons Hermione wanted to be back in the trailer when Avery woke up.

Snape appeared to have reconciled himself to the fact that she refused to discontinue her mission, and that it had in fact become a joint enterprise. He was crisp and concise while giving her a brief run-down of her injuries and what he had healed so far; fortunately, he hadn't discovered any internal injuries or broken bones. Passive magic, like potions or charmed objects, was undetectable by the authorities; it was only wand-waving, foolish or otherwise, that attracted their attention.

Snape also assured her that Avery would be asleep for at least another two hours; Hermione didn't enquire as to the source for his information.

They compared notes on Avery's movements; since Hermione only knew what he saw fit to divulge to her and what he did in the trailer, which was nothing much, it came as a surprise to her to find out how deeply he had been involved with Hankwell. However, it was only when Snape grudgingly admitted that Avery had received a remittance from the unknown benefactor she now was certain was Malfoy that Hermione understood why she was in her present position.

"Oh God, that's why – the money he gave me! It wasn't an advance, it was the last of the handout…"

"Not quite. He seemed to have plenty left for drinks the following week," Snape remarked dryly, but Hermione wasn't listening.

"Last night- I said it was lucky he asked for an advance from Hankwell like I told him, so he had something at least. That's why it set him off – because it was Avery who gave Hankwell money, instead of the other way around…"

"Avery was always utterly incapable of listening to good advice when it was presented to him. It's almost as if he delights in taking the opposite course of action, and then blames everyone but himself," Snape said distantly, like he was observing from very far away; the outer orbit of the moon, perhaps. Belatedly, Hermione realised that the sun was much higher in the sky than she remembered from the last time she looked, and cast an eye at the clock.

"I've got to get back, it's almost half seven!"

"There is plenty of time still. We are barely twenty feet from your trailer."

"Oh. So what happens now, then?"

"I thought you were supposed to be the professional," he said archly, needling her.

"I was just being polite, actually. I'll tell you what to do, if you prefer that." Snape cast his eyes up to the heavens and Hermione smirked a little; she had learnt something since she was seventeen, after all.

"I'll knock before coming back in," he announced peremptorily. "The loo is the door opposite." Without wasting more words he swept out, leaving her slightly confused but grateful to have some privacy before creeping back to Avery's trailer. Snape left her just enough time to freshen up and use the toilet before he returned bearing a small vial.

"Put two drops of this in his tea-" Hermione snorted; Avery seemed to have jettisoned tea-drinking somewhere on the road between Hogwarts and Detroit, just like he had given up on his ambitions to render the world free of Muggles. "Or beer, then," Snape conceded. "I'm sure you will contrive. It will make him sleep soundly for at least six hours. Once you are satisfied that he has been asleep for at least fifteen minutes, come and see me."

Hermione nodded, pocketing the vial.

As soon as she was standing, all the little reminders that she had been through the wringer returned; Snape had managed to magic away most of the aches and pains, but some stiffness remained.

"Professor Snape – thank you. For everything," she said earnestly, looking up at him. Hermione was surprised to find that he was much shorter than she remembered; the power of his persona made it irrelevant that he wasn't any taller than Harry.

He looked back at her without saying anything, and remained immobile as she hobbled to the door, not acknowledging her gratitude with as much as a nod. Even in Muggle clothing, standing in the middle of a trailer that had been new when Elvis was still alive, he cut an imposing figure, and Hermione caught herself doubting if he really would be there when she came back in the evening.

His return from the dead seemed too surreal to actually be true.

Reality hit her square in the face as she limped up the steps to the trailer Lucinda Avery called home, and all musings on former Potions Masters and spies were banished as she remembered that she would have to figure out how to deal with Avery.

She really ought to have taken Susan Bones up on her offer last autumn and gone with her to her karate classes.

-oOo-

* * *

**Thank you so much for every review, favourite or follow - it truly makes my day! **


	3. Chapter 3 - Off the Hook

**Thanks again to At Some Actor's West Side Loft for sterling beta work!**

* * *

**Chapter 3 **

**Off the Hook**

**-oOo-**

* * *

Thinking quickly, Hermione decided that the best thing to do was to take her cue from Lucinda Avery. Lucinda had somehow failed to mention that her brother occasionally used her as a punching bag when his miserable existence became too much for him; if she had, the odds were that Hermione wouldn't have been there in the first place. Her sense of self-preservation was perfectly healthy, thank you very much, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement did have some standards.

On the handful of occasions when Avery had lashed out at Hermione during the past few months it had been quite different; he had left bruises, but never hit her more than once. He had definitely never knocked her unconscious before. This was an escalation, and if it hadn't been for Snape and his potions she would have been in much worse shape.

In the real world, where Hermione had brown, bushy hair and friends and a wand, she would have torn into Avery without mercy. She may be smaller than him, but even without magic she wasn't afraid of the middle-aged alcoholic with the contemptible past. Her natural instinct was to confront him, but that was the very last thing Lucinda Avery would do; she knew that much, at least.

No, Lucinda evaded conflict; she was more likely to pretend that nothing had happened, so Hermione took care to go about her normal morning routine albeit very slowly. As soon as she stole a glance in the cracked bathroom mirror she realised that Snape had been very crafty; a large bruise discoloured her cheek, but she didn't actually feel any pain.

Avery was sullen; it probably passed for contrition in his world. He stayed in the trailer all day, uncommunicative except for an occasional grunt when she was in the vicinity of the fridge.

It was easy to sneak two drops from the vial Snape had given her into Avery's fifth bottle of Miller; he was hardly in a state to notice. Still, she made sure to turn her back to him and check for any reflective surfaces first – letting him see what she was up to in the mirror would be irredeemably stupid.

After a seemingly interminable period of time - despite checking her watch every thirty seconds, Snape's fifteen minutes had mentioned never seemed to end- Avery was finally soundly asleep. Hermione removed the bottle from his hand and lifted his feet up on the couch. So far, it wasn't very different from many other evenings she had spent wishing she were somewhere else.

Pausing to think, she fetched a baseball cap left behind by the previous occupant and covered her head; she was pretty sure that the neighbours were dealing prescription drugs and couldn't give a rat's arse about what she was up to, but she didn't end up where she was today by being careless. Hermione almost snorted out loud at herself; maybe that was where she had gone wrong, then.

Standing outside Snape's caravan, she lifted her hand to knock on the door, only to let it fall down again. She had thought of little else all day, but now when she was about to face the man she didn't know what to say to him.

As it turned out she didn't have to say much; he quickly whisked her into his trailer and handed her a cup of tea, which, along with the Jaffa cakes he miraculously produced, did much to dispel any awkwardness. Jaffa cakes! It was almost like being on a caravan holiday in Bognor Regis, and something across Hermione's shoulders unclenched.

"Do you always ply your guests with delicacies from their native land to lull them into false security? Is this some secret Slytherin technique to make me relax?"

"One would have thought you would be familiar with the concept of basic hospitality, Miss Granger. I would offer to educate you, but I'm afraid I'm sadly out of practice."

"That's very magnanimous of you, Professor. Or is it Mr Snape these days, then?"

"Mr Snape will do," he said in clipped tones. That put her off for half a minute, and he used the opportunity to enquire, in particularly bland tones, whether she still went as Miss Granger or if he should address her differently.

"You're welcome to call me Hermione, if you like. If you're wondering whether I got married, the answer is no."

"I'm surprised Mr Weasley has no quibble with your mission here. Is he hoping to be released from his shackles for good?"

"In fairness to Ron and everyone else, they had no idea Avery occasionally uses his sister as a punching bag. Lucinda kept very quiet about that."

"Still, once he finds out he is surely bound to insist that you pull out."

"Ron doesn't actually have an ounce of chivalry in him, you know," Hermione said fondly. "It's one of the few ways you can tell that he's a pure-blood. That, and his complete ignorance of any technologies invented after the steam engine."

"Regardless, I can't see him countenance the present situation with equanimity. Even if Weasley did, surely Potter's hero complex will render him incapable of leaving you in situ."

"It might, if I told him and if he was involved in this in any operational capacity." Hermione sighed. "You really don't know Harry as anything other than an extension of his parents, do you?"

Snape was doing a rather impressive imitation of a statue, but Hermione would have bet good money that he was listening. Whether he was actually hearing anything she was saying was a different matter altogether, however.

"Harry's eldest son is five, he's another one who's three and a six month old daughter. There's no way he would ever go running around looking for Dark wizards when he still has young children at home. He's been on desk duty since James was born." She pretended not to notice Snape's face contorting at the name of Harry's first-born; she was storing up the bombshell of Albus' second name for the time being. Something told her Snape could be spectacularly annoying, so it was good to be prepared.

"Sir- Mr Snape, I've got an adult relationship with my friends. That means that they trust my judgement, and won't come running trying to save me unless I ask them to," Hermione explained patiently. "There's an MLE team on standby in Canada who'll intervene if it is absolutely necessary. Quite frankly, it would have to be of the magnitude of Voldemort returning to be worth the hassle."

"What have you done with Lucinda?" Snape asked, disregarding her completely.

"She's in Cancun. Someone is babysitting her, so she's safe, and I've been told she's quite happy to be working on her tan and drink Margaritas. She has agreed to make herself available for questions." She should have known that he would seize on that immediately.

"How can you get in contact with them?"

"Muggle mobile numbers," Hermione told him; a glorious idea had just occurred to her, but she would need his help if this was going to work. "Could you buy one for me? Just pay as you go, no names that could be traced-"

"I was a spy for rather a long time, Miss Granger. I am familiar with the concept of untraceable means of communication."

"Will you get me a phone, then? I'll give you money-" Snape waved her offer away; naturally, if he was sponsored by Malfoy he hardly needed the paltry sums Hermione would be able to dredge up from her emergency stash.

"One will be procured for you for tomorrow night. I do hope you have enough wits to use code words - the American Ministry is monitoring certain key words being used on the Muggle networks."

"I am aware, yes." She glared at him; sometimes it seemed like Snape really did believe he was the only person in the world with more than five brain cells to rub together.

* * *

True to his word, the following night he produced an unremarkable mobile; Hermione eagerly tore the packaging open and tried not to betray her dismay as she realised that she would have to wait for it to charge first.

"Is there anything you'd like me to ask my team to do?" she asked Snape, belatedly realising that he appeared to be on his own without a set of minders in Cancun and the backing of a whole Ministry home in the UK. Then again, she supposed Malfoy's money probably could buy quite a lot of strictly unofficial assistance.

"Oh, so they didn't leave you entirely to your own devices?"

"Of course not. It's just that it's not possible for them to be here-"

"Rendering them almost completely ineffective then, as opposed to entirely useless."

"Fine, suit yourself. Would you like me to tell them that you're here, too?"

Snape looked at her like she had added Erumpent Potion to a boiling cauldron.

"Let me be clear, since the fact that I have kept my continued presence in this valley of tears secret for a decade doesn't appear to be sufficient evidence to the contrary. No, Miss Granger, I would not."

"The reason I asked," she informed him with exaggerated patience, "is that they would be able to help you too, in that case. If you would, say, get jailed for using unauthorised magic."

"An extradition warrant to Britain isn't exactly my definition of 'help'."

"Would it really kill you to hear me out? There happens to be a retroactive pardon in Kingsley's desk drawer on your behalf. Minerva insisted. The only reason we didn't publicise it was that you were well- dead. She'll be insufferable when she finds out that you're alive."

"This is… unexpected." Snape looked acutely uncomfortable; Hermione had no idea whether he was unhappy owing a considerable favour to Minerva, overcome with emotion at her unwavering faith in him (perhaps not) or shocked that he finally could return to Britain, fully exonerated.

"I don't know if Minerva actually suspected anything, or if it was just because she felt so awful about that last year at Hogwarts. You'll have to ask her yourself, I'm sure she'll insist to talk to you once the lads tell her the news."

Hermione watched Snape intently, but he made no motion to forbid her to tell 'the lads' about his survival. Well, then; wizarding Britain was about to choke on its morning cuppa.

She gave him a few minutes to get to terms with his return to the land of the living before returning to their conversation. Snape hardly seemed to need it, judging by his unperturbed expression, but she thought she had seen something glimmer in his eyes earlier, suggesting that he probably was a little more shaken than he cared to appear.

"We haven't tried it yet, but the team should be able to transfer me to Harry and Ron, too. Despite what you may think, neither of them is involved in this. Ron isn't even an Auror any longer, he's working with George in the shop now. I'm the only one of us still on active duty."

Snape looked utterly uninterested; Hermione was starting to learn that it was a sign that he wouldn't be averse to the subject being expanded upon, as long as he didn't have to betray any interest in the matter.

"Funnily enough, it turned out that the adrenaline junkie among us was me. I went back to Hogwarts after the war, of course-" Something that may have been a snort in someone else escaped from Snape, but when Hermione turned around to look at him he looked as bland as ever. "Yes, I did take my N.E.W.T.s. Got an O in Potions actually, despite Slughorn being about half the teacher you were. Don't look so surprised," she said sarcastically; his face hadn't moved at all. "It quickly became apparent that Slughorn was rather more proficient at picking out the next generation of Ministry careerists than he was at teaching."

"Such cynicism," Snape remarked. "Did he not invite you back to the Slug Club, then?"

"My interests laid elsewhere," Hermione commented airily, unwilling to be manipulated. She forbore from mentioning that she had decided that therapy would be more beneficial than Slughorn's stupid gatherings, when she was trying to get back on her feet after the war. The wizarding world still seemed to believe denial was the best cure for PTSD; that didn't mean Hermione had been obliged to join the stiff upper lip brigade.

"After Hogwarts, I spent a few years campaigning for house-elves and other creatures before I joined the Ministry."

"Splendid. I shall now be in a position to write your CV, should the unlikely occurrence present itself."

Hermione pretended not to hear him.

"First I came in as an Auror. Ron had already left at that stage, but I actually got to train with Harry for a while."

"Just like the good old days – the witless and the too clever by half, bumbling along to create a better world."

"Nowadays, I'm splitting my time between Magical Law Enforcement and the Aurory. I usually get the less straightforward assignments. Most of the Aurors, like Susan Bones for example, are a bit more- well, action-orientated. Goes in, grabs the perp, mission complete. When there's something a little less straightforward or Muggle-related, they come to me."

"Despite his rather impressive collection of character flaws, Horace is rarely wrong in his predictions of who the leading lights in the next generation will be," Snape observed. "I was subjected to a particularly memorable diatribe as he waxed lyrical about your potential to reform wizarding Britain. I didn't know you gave up so easily, Miss Granger."

It hit Hermione straight in the chest; it was almost as if he were disappointed with her, and if there was anything she still couldn't abide it was not living up to expectations.

"I don't," she said quickly, and knew she had given too much away. It was pathetic to be looking for his approval a decade after he had ceased being her teacher, but there had always been something irresistible about being able to impress Snape. It was probably the sheer impossibility of it.

"Look," she said, opting for complete honesty; considering what she knew about him, it was only fair. "I realised that it was quite arrogant for a twenty-one-year-old straight out of school to tell house-elves and and magical creatures what they ought to be doing. The system needs to change, I still believe that, but maybe it ought to come from the people involved." She made a wry grimace; it had come as an unpleasant surprise to find out how wrong she had been. "I still want to make things better, but I finally realised that it might be better to learn about the way things are first before starting to change them straight away."

She swallowed the dregs of her tea. Tonight's offering merely consisted of bourbon biscuits - clearly inferior to the long gone Jaffa cakes. Hermione shook off the impulse to regard it as a reflection of how she stood in his estimation upon closer acquaintance.

"So now I'm learning about the sort of problems the wider Department of Magical Law Enforcement has to sort out. Hopefully, that means that I'll be able to find better ways of doing things in the future. I'm not always on missions, I just happened to meet all the qualifications for this one."

Namely that she was female, used to Muggles, clever enough to pretend to be Lucinda Avery, and important enough that the Americans would be forced to release her eventually if she was caught. Williamson hadn't exactly had a large pool of candidates to choose from, and she reckoned she was owed enough favours for agreeing to it to last her until he retired.

"Fascinating as it is to hear how you landed your current plum assignment, Granger, I'm still at a loss as to how all this pertains to me," Snape said in the same long-suffering voice as before; something seemed to have shifted between them, though, and Hermione told herself that it was because he finally was seeing her as an adult. A girl could dream.

"I thought you'd enjoy hearing how your old students are getting on," Hermione said innocently. There was a gleam of something she was almost certain was amusement in his eyes; emboldened, she continued. "Neville will be teaching at Hogwarts soon. He's married to Hannah Abbott, who's taken over the Leaky Cauldron. Ginny Weasley writes about Quidditch for _The Daily Prophet_ – oh, and she's married to Harry. Dean Thomas works for Gringotts, together with Theo Nott – they just moved in together, by the way. Tracey Davis-"

The world was destined never to find out what Tracey did next, as Snape stopped Hermione with a groan.

"Enough. You do realise I went into teaching because it allowed me to carry out my other role, not because I actually had any interest in you lot."

"Whatever you say, sir." Hermione had formed her own opinion about that. While she had no doubt that Snape's calling as an educator had been slim to non-existent when he first started teaching at Hogwarts when he was twenty-one, he had done his level best to protect his students by the end of his tenure. Snape mightn't have gone as far as harbouring any actual affection for them, as evidenced by his treatment of Neville. Since he did manage to keep them all alive, she was inclined to cut him some slack on that account.

Hermione had realised long ago that being on the side of the angels didn't necessarily make you a nice person.

Finally, the mobile had finished charging. Hermione punched in her non-emergency contact number with fingers that were mostly steady, while Snape watched her silently.

"Hello?" a sleepy voice slurred.

Hermione rolled her eyes. Twenty-four hour shifts, they had said; when she was in charge of a mission she made sure no one was asleep on the job, at the very least.

"Hello, this is Jean. Who am I speaking to?"

"Jean?" The voice was suddenly alert. "How are you? Sorry, this is Luke." Simon Lucas, then: one of the young bloods she didn't know that well. He was competent enough when he was awake.

"Good. Not bad," Hermione amended, mindful of Snape's eyebrows silently but eloquently disputing her assessment. "George isn't exactly playing ball, but we'll get there."

"What can we get you?" Lucas was up to snuff; he had been trained get the most important things sorted out first, in case they were interrupted.

"Nothing." Hermione had considered, but there wasn't really anything she could think of that was worth the risk of delivery. She still wasn't sure how far she could count on Snape to assist her in hiding things from Avery, or if she really wanted to take advantage of what for want of a better description had to be called his better nature.

"I'd like to talk to Will, though," she continued, thinking that Williamson really ought to spend a little more time on coming up with a code name if he was going to head missions like this one. "And Queenie, if he's around."

It was a bit of a gamble to request the Minister for Magic to be woken up at six o'clock in the morning, but Kingsley did have a soft spot for his old colleagues in the Aurory.

"I'll see what I can do. How are things over there - how are George and you getting along?"

This would have been easier without the patented Snape stare directed at her, but Hermione soldiered on.

"He's not a happy camper. Turns out he's a bit- slap-happy. You should ask Lucy about that."

"Will do. Still staying in the same place?"

"Yes, stuck here for the time being." Hermione didn't mention her vaguely formulated plans to try to use any guilt he may feel for knocking his sister unconscious to manipulate Avery into moving on across the Canadian border, once he started speaking to her again.

"Bugger."

"You could say that."

"Hello, Harriet," a new voice said at the other end of the line; Williamson.

"Will, for the last time: it's Jean. Harriet was my _girlfriend_ last year," Lucas corrected him before Hermione could enter the fray. Snape was looking less than impressed with wizarding Britain's finest.

"Jean it is, so. You've been away much longer than expected, my dear. Want us to get you out of there?"

"No," Hermione said, a little more sharply than she had intended.

"There's no shame in wanting to come home, you know. We'll think of something else."

"Like what?" Fortunately, Williamson was unaware of Option B, five foot eleven inches of glowering ex-Death Eater sitting next to her in the trailer. Hermione knew Williamson didn't have an alternative; if that had been the case, she wouldn't have been there in the first place.

"If you want out, you want out and that's that."

"Well I don't, so don't waste your time on it. Will I get to talk to Queenie tonight, or is he still snoozing away?"

"He's travelling – right now he's somewhere out in the Far East. Can we pass on a message?"

There was nothing for it; she'd have to tell Williamson. Looking meaningfully at Snape, she cleared her throat. Hermione may still be predisposed to think she knew better than most people what was best for them (and really, could they blame her, she sometimes thought surly when watching her fellow creatures), but outing Severus Snape against his will was on a different magnitude altogether. This was his last chance to stop her.

"First of all I need to tell you that I've got company," she started cautiously. Snape was still silent.

"Really?"

"From home, actually."

Williamson was uncharacteristically quiet, probably considering which of Avery's cronies were still at large.

"Anyone we know?" he asked cautiously.

"You used to, anyway. Will, maybe you should sit down for this one," Hermione advised.

"You're scaring me, Her- Jean," Williamson recovered himself at the last minute, and Hermione hoped no one from the American Ministry was listening in. She would bet good money they didn't have to put up with superiors who considered code names to be beneath them.

"It should be. It's… Sebastian Slake."

"Who, now?"

Hermione had to concede that it wasn't exactly obvious.

"He- disappeared ten years ago." She tried to emphasise almost all the words at once, which didn't help. "Ten years ago, remember?"

"I remember," Williamson growled, and she hastened to clarify.

"He was with us! It's a good thing that he's here, he's not a friend of George's. Well, he used to be, but- they fell out years ago, only George didn't find out until later..."

"What did you say his name was again?" Williamson didn't sound like a man who had understood where this was going.

"Sebastian Slake. He used to- to like snakes." Snape emitted something between a snort and a sigh, and Hermione blushed. She'd like to see him to come up with something better on the fly, she thought, before remembering that Snape had been a spy for a very long time. He could probably speak in code in his sleep.

"Slake? Never heard that name before," Williamson grumbled. Hermione closed her eyes and imagine Lucas giving him a good shake to prevent her impatience from spilling over.

"Septimus Spain? Samuel Slate? Of the house of reptile fame?" Hermione hissed, trying to make him hear more than what she was saying. "Luke, help a girl out here."

"He used to be a teacher," Lucas said, hesitant but with a touch of wonder that told her he, at least, knew whom she was talking about.

"Yes!" Hermione could hear the rasp of a quill on the other side of the phone, and finally the penny seemed to drop with her superior.

"My word," Williamson said feebly.


	4. Chapter 4 - A Crooked Sixpence

**Thanks to At Some Actor's West Side Loft for beta-reading! **

* * *

**Chapter 4**

**A Crooked Sixpence**

**-oOo-**

* * *

The heat lingered, making the trailer park even more devoid of life than usual. Hermione was reduced to trying to create a breeze by flapping the horse racing magazines strewn around the trailer in the direction of her sweaty throat. Avery, exhausted from the heat, gave up prowling his usual haunts in favour of staying in the shade. Currently, he was trying to come up with a winning lottery number system using numerology and half-forgotten elements of Arithmancy. Hermione refrained from informing him that dozens of wizards tried to get one over the Muggles and game the system in Britain every year, only to meet with certain failure. For someone who had lived among Muggles for the better part of a decade, Avery was still curiously prone to underestimating their intelligence.

Hermione saw little of Snape during the day, but when she caught up with him in the evenings he always looked like he had been starched and chucked into the freezer afterwards. The only thing the heat seemed to affect was his hair, which looked greasier than ever. If Hermione didn't know better she would have thought he had access to the ultimate of luxuries, air conditioning, but she knew very well his trailer was even less equipped with mod-cons than the one she was sharing with Avery.

"Do you have a fan?" she asked. "One you turn off and hide before I come over?"

"You're making even less sense than usual, Granger," Snape informed her languorously, not moving from his chair.

"The heat. You look like you just stepped out of the dungeons at Hogwarts."

"I assure you that's not the case." He looked almost wistful at the thought; apparently he hadn't taken advantage of Avery's inactivity to seek out somewhere cooler to spend the day.

"It's utterly unfair, anyway," she told him, but without any passion in her voice; it was just too hot for anything more energetic than mild annoyance.

"There are ice cubes in the freezer," he offered, making no effort to actually retrieve them for her.

"Too far," Hermione whined. "Are you sure you don't have a fan?"

"Positive." Seemingly bored with the discussion, Snape launched into a non sequitur. "I told Avery he has two and a half thousand dollars to collect from his anonymous benefactor in Hamilton."

"Hamilton in Canada?" Hermione asked, suddenly alert. Part of the orientation process before the mission started had been local geography, but at the beginning Avery had been based in Chicago and it had been a few months since then in any case.

"No, Granger. In Scotland."

Hermione ignored the sarcasm; it seemed less withering than a decade ago, or perhaps it was because she had spent the better part of the intervening years working for the Ministry where words often were wielded like weapons.

"Nice amount. Not too much, but still more money than he's seen for a good while," she mused out loud, and Snape raised his left eyebrow as if it was so obvious that it didn't bear commenting on. Hermione wondered if he received all compliments that way, before realising that it probably wasn't a very frequent occurrence for him. Somehow, she found it difficult to imagine Lucius Malfoy doling out praise for anyone other than himself.

She didn't say anything about the wider connotations of his plan; at some point during the last few decades it had been beaten into Hermione that any hint of premature celebrations would thoroughly jinx even the most fail-safe course of action. Snape appeared to share her view. He was one of the least optimistic people she had ever come across; it probably had something to do with the fact that everything she knew of that could have gone wrong in his life so far had. Except surviving Nagini and the Shrieking Shack; he was still tight-lipped on the details, but Hermione had full confidence in her ability to extract them from him eventually.

-oOp-

Fortunately, neither of them had assumed it would be easy to get Avery to where they wanted him to be, as Avery proved reluctant despite the lure of the cash. A week went by and there was no evidence of Snape's offer other than sneaking glances at the old tea tin Hermione kept the household money stashed in. Avery's gaze would flick to it when Hermione ostensibly was busy watching her talk shows. Other than that, he was showing remarkable resistance for a man who was two weeks behind on the rent and whose newest suit had been made before Hermione started Hogwarts.

Hermione had never been very patient; not like Snape, who probably could wait out the apocalypse. The next night, before sneaking across to Snape's trailer, she carefully poured a few drops of water down the side of Avery's mobile phone, making sure it seeped in through the tiny cracks in the case.

She didn't tell Snape.

He was hardly going to give her a pat on the back, and she didn't like the way his face went all blank after giving her another lecture on taking proper precautions. Only his eyes would be expressive; black pools of memories staring back at her across three decades, and Hermione would feel as useless as she did when Harry said something off-hand about his life with the Dursleys that he thought was completely normal but made Hermione want to Apparate straight to Privet Drive and- and do something to them. Multiple times.

The following day Avery returned early; he must have discovered his ruined mobile not long after pulling out from the trailer park. Even if she had been expecting him, Hermione tensed up involuntarily when she heard the familiar banging of the Volvo approaching. However, all Avery did was to go straight to the couch, landing on it so heavily that the trailer was shaking with the impact.

"I need you to do something for me, Lucy," he said, after what seemed much longer than it really was.

"Do what?" Hermione asked peevishly, trying to remember what Lucinda Avery had sounded like when pressed for the umpteenth time on what exactly Avery had said to greet her when she had joined him in exile in Venezuela.

"I need you to stick your throat out and risk being double-crossed by Lucius Malfoy."

Hermione hadn't quite expected him to be that honest, and she didn't have to fake her astonishment.

"You what?"

"The bastard's doing what he did the last time, handing out scraps from his table." Avery sounded bitter and Hermione remembered that, according to his file, it had been the prospect of riches and a return to glory that had tempted him to join the Death Eaters in the first place. "It seems like we've been deemed worthy of his condescension this time."

"How generous of Lucius," Hermione said, not quite sneering. Many years ago Lucinda had been quite friendly with Lucius Malfoy and there had been a lingering trace of admiration in her voice as she spoke of him, even now.

Hermione had always suspected that half of Malfoy's success was due to the simple fact that he was rich and good-looking; with some people that seemed to hold more sway than his actual character.

"Indeed," Avery snarled, apparently not taken in by the man's flashy exterior; it probably had something to with them having been brothers in arms. In Hermione's experience, there was no one former Death Eaters hated so much as old comrades whom they perceived to have double-crossed them. Lucius Malfoy, who had come out of the war seemingly unscathed, was usually the most resented of them all.

"Why do you need me to do it?" Hermione asked, and for once the tone of annoyance in her voice was one hundred percent genuine. Was it really to much to ask for Avery just to do as he was asked for once and get his arse across the border?

"I've got my reasons," he replied vaguely.

"Well, I don't see why I should have to do it if you can't even tell me why," she tried.

"I would have thought that would be obvious," Avery retorted and a spike of adrenaline shot through Hermione. Her stomach suddenly seemed to be filled of ice.

Damn that stupid bint Lucinda and her half-told stories thrice to hell, she thought, promising herself to make sure Lucinda's omissions were reflected in the size of the award she had been promised by the Ministry for her full cooperation.

The British Ministry for Magic's secret operatives had located Lucinda in a Muggle hospital in Chicago, after Avery had one drink too many and crashed the previous incarnation of his precious Volvo with both of them in it. Lucinda had been only too happy to betray her brother in exchange for a return to her comfortable life in Britain. Lately, Hermione had started to understand why sibling loyalty had weighed so lightly in the balance. That was one thing, and perhaps Lucinda was more traumatised than the interrogation team had realised. This was different. By the sounds of it this was vital knowledge for her operation, and she didn't have a clue what Avery was talking about.

"I still don't want to," she tried, settling for petulant in her blind flailing for a suitable response.

"You like to eat, don't you?" Avery asked with an edge to his voice. "In that case, I suggest you get on the bus in the morning."

Well, that could have gone better; Hermione still had no idea whether Avery knew that he could be extradited from Canada, or if it was just a healthy fear of Malfoy's malicious machinations that was keeping him away. In any case her cover still held, so it could have gone worse too; she had to ask Snape if he had any inkling of what Avery had meant about Malfoy.

* * *

Hermione tried to look apprehensive as she sat on the Greyhound bus to Hamilton. It was difficult; she was getting out from under Avery's sharp eyes for the first time for months, there was the definite prospect of actually doing some magic, and she knew Snape was waiting for her on the other side of the border. She had already let her disappointment over the failure of Snape's plan fade; it had been a long shot in the first place.

Snape purposely hadn't told her what his disguise would be, and it was with some uncertainty Hermione approached the middle-aged Asian gentleman with his python-patterned green scarf. A smirk that looked decidedly foreign on the pleasant face told her she had picked the right person.

Following Snape down increasingly dark alleys, after a short pretend-conversation on her mobile in the very unlikely case Avery had anyone watching her in Canada, Hermione eventually came to a dead end.

"It'd be ironic if you did rob me and ran off with my money now," she remarked, as Snape cast a few discrete wards before proceeding to change her appearance as soon as the Polyjuice wore off. Hermione had carefully timed its effects to expire in Canada, so she could indulge in the enormous luxury of wearing her own skin in public. It was still unwise to appear as Hermione Granger in the streets of Hamilton, despite its negligible wizarding population, so Snape condescended to some wand-waving to disguise her appearance somewhat. After seeing him duel against Lockhart, Hermione had always suspected his famous lecture for first-year students exaggerated his contempt for wands; no one could be that good at something he considered beneath his notice.

"Unlikely. I'd aim a bit higher than Ministry employees," Snape said as they left the alley again, Hermione delighting in the ease with which she could walk after leaving twenty years behind in the dank lane.

"Don't say that, I'm making a fortune at the moment. The advantage of having an ex-Auror as Minister for Magic is that he knows how desperate it is to get office pay for being on triple shifts, so we actually get decent money when we're out on missions now," Hermione explained.

"Living the dream, Granger." Snape didn't quite manage to sound as detached as he aimed for, and it was more of gentle teasing than a put-down than he had probably been intending.

"Oh, I'm rich anyway – I've got my Order of Merlin stipend." She stole a sideways glance at him as they reached the main street again. "And so have you, now. Plus ten years' interest."

The flabbergasted expression suited Snape's alias much better than it would have fit on his actual face.

"It would be most un-Slytherin of you to turn it down," she continued. "Especially if you did it because you didn't think you deserved it. I can't think of anyone who would deserve it more."

"Your presumptions about my behaviour are neither accurate or welcome, Granger," Snape snarled and Hermione knew she had got through to him.

"I'm not fifteen anymore," she placidly pointed out. "You can't intimidate me by playing the big bad Death Eater."

"That's what I _am_, Granger. Your tendencies towards self-delusion have finally prevailed if you're telling yourself otherwise." He was staring straight ahead, not seeing either the crowds or the sunshine beating down on them.

Hermione didn't mind him; she had made up her mind long ago.

"Seeing as you switched allegiances before I even learnt how to talk, there's no need to fool myself into believing anything. It's as plain as the nose on your face," she informed him, only realising afterwards that using his most prominent feature for the comparison might not make him more inclined to listen to her. It probably didn't matter anyway; he was in full flight now.

"Did you ever stop to ask yourself why I joined the Dark Lord in the first place?" Snape asked nastily between clenched teeth. "Your sunny little Gryffindor tale of redemption becomes a little less compelling then, doesn't it?"

"I should imagine that would be obvious," Hermione answered and Snape stopped to turn his scorching look on her. "Oh, come on," she continued. "You don't think I still take everything Dumbledore ever said or did as gospel?"

The lack of response made it clear that he apparently did.

"He made it abundantly clear to you who mattered and who didn't when you were sixteen. What were you supposed to have done?"

They had stopped completely now, navigating without conscious thought to an empty gate where they weren't jostled by the sparse mid-morning crowd.

"It doesn't erase what you did," Hermione said in a low voice. "Nothing will, just like nothing can undo what I've done or what other people did in the war. The only thing we can do is to atone for it as best we can, and try and do better."

Snape's face was absolutely blank, bit Hermione wasn't finished yet. "You know where I work. I've read almost everything the Ministry has on file about the war, and I know what happened. I know what Rookwood and Yaxley did in Woking on Halloween '97, I know how Bellatrix killed the Bones family- I know what they did. Why else do you think I'm so adamant about not giving up on Avery?" she asked, still without him answering. "Without you they'd still be at it, so forgive me for stating the obvious when I say you're not one of them."

Hermione reckoned that there had been enough lecturing for one morning; Snape would never acknowledge what she had said, but she was pretty certain that he had been listening at least.

"Will you take me to the Botanical Gardens now, or do I have to do all the work myself? It's my first day off in four and a half months, you know," she reminded Snape, and the shadow of the war dissolved in the bright Canadian daylight.

With visible effort Snape returned to their normal way of conversing; he did seem relieved to leave the subject of his past.

Walking down the road towards the bus stop, Hermione happened to catch a glimpse of herself in a shop window.

"Sev- Sebastian Slake!" She caught herself at the last minute. "I can't believe you've let me walk around like this!"

Snape looked at her in what appeared to be honest puzzlement. Slowly, understanding dawned.

"I assume you are referring to the cosmetics you appear to have applied?"

"Yes," Hermione snapped, doing her best with a pocket mirror and a handkerchief. "Don't tell me the master spy doesn't know that women don't usually wear lipstick on only half their mouths."

Using Polyjuice didn't mean that you actually turned into someone else, as Hermione had learnt in second year; it merely reshaped your body into an exact copy of the person whose hair (or nail clippings) had been added to the potion. Snape had taken care of her clothes, but the makeup she had applied that morning had migrated to where Lucinda Avery's features were placed on Hermione's face. Lucinda had high cheekbones and plump lips forming a narrow mouth; Hermione didn't.

She should have remembered, but she had been looking like Lucinda for months and there were so many other things to think of. Hermione cast a dark look at Snape, who courteously was shielding her from the passers-by as she tried to remove the offending products.

"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, unable to refrain from poking into this curious slip-up from the man who appeared to master any situation he found himself in.

"I- I wasn't sure whether the effect was intended or not," he said in clipped tones. Wonders never ceased – Hermione would be willing to swear that was a slight blush creeping up his cheeks.

"It wasn't, take my word for it. That shade of pink lipstick doesn't even suit Lucinda, much less me."

"It used to be tolerably flattering when she was a girl," Snape offered unexpectedly, and she remembered that he and Lucinda had been friends.

"Sorry. It just gets a bit too much to be living her life – this is the first time I feel like myself in public for months." He glanced sharply at her for no particular reason she could make out.

"The two of you are rather different," he observed a few minutes later. "In every discernible way."

"What was she like, Lucinda?" Hermione asked. She had grilled him on the subject before, of course, but now she was more interested in who Lucinda was rather than how to impersonate her more efficiently.

Snape seemed to pick up on the gist of her question.

"Very much the pure-blood miss. She would have been happy with a wealthy husband and a child or two. There was never any harm in her, other than some relatively innocuous blood-snobbery."

They had reached the bus stop and lingered a few steps away from the other passengers, so they could continue their conversation.

"Remember it was almost all the Averys had: lineage you could trace back to Cromwell, a ramshackle country house and their notions of what was due to them. Lucinda was the best of the lot of them," Snape murmured in Hermione's ear as they scampered onto the bus.

"Were there more of them, then?" Hermione asked curiously.

"Ethel, the eldest. She cleared out as fast as she could after Hogwarts - never heard much about her afterwards, except that she came badly out of the first war. The sort of woman who'd sell her firstborn if the price was right." Snape was staring ahead, right into the turban covering the hair of the passenger in front of them. "Lucinda wasn't like that. She's a decent person, regardless of who her brother is and her appalling lack of common sense. Her great misfortune was not being pretty enough."

Hermione huffed incredulously at that pronouncement.

"Do think for a moment," Snape admonished her. "What do you think would have happened to young Miss Avery, had she been clever or powerful? As a thoroughly unremarkable woman, she managed to go through two wars without anyone paying her much attention."

"And look what she got for her troubles in the end," Hermione muttered, but for once she felt some unwilling sympathy for Lucinda. "What about Avery? What was he like?"

Snape quirked his narrow bottom lip.

"Not nearly as clever as he thought he was, but canny enough to keep up with our gang." Still speaking at a murmur, he managed to spit out the last two words. "Always half a step behind, running to keep up with Lucius and Bellatrix. He'd do anything to show that he was one of them, by rights. It was always about belonging with him, claiming back his birthright," Snape continued pensively. "The best you could say for him is that he was sufficiently perceptive to realise that he was unlikely to turn around the family fortunes single-handedly, despite his limited intellectual capacity."

Hermione tried to imagine Snape at the same age, all awkward arms and legs and sullen brilliance. She couldn't imagine him ceding to Avery purely on the grounds of his impeccable bloodlines, and wondered again how anyone as intelligent as Snape could have fallen for Voldemort's propaganda. It was much more complicated than that, she had to remind herself. Anything to do with Snape was always going to be complicated.

* * *

The Royal Botanical Gardens just outside Hamilton were a sight for sore eyes more accustomed to urban sprawl; Snape was unusually patient with Hermione's injunction to look at one conglomeration of bright flowers after the other. He must have sneaked a look at the visitor map at the entrance, since he unerringly brought her to the medicinal garden despite her frequent stops to admire this or that.

Something in the neat flowerbeds seemed to set the Potions master in him at ease. Hermione would be content to stay there for days, breathing in the heady scent of lavender and rosemary that reminded her of home. Suddenly she missed England so much that it hurt, and she wondered how Snape managed. She knew enough not to ask, however; they weren't quite at the stage where personal questions were a matter of course in their conversation.

Sitting on a stone bench older than anything within five miles of her trailer, feeling the heat of the sun soak through from the stone, Hermione realised that she was quite determined that they would eventually reach that stage in their acquaintance.

Snape was inspecting the flowerbeds, surreptitiously tearing off little sprigs from the plants to squash them between his long fingers and inhale the scent, sometimes carefully tasting them too.

He could have walked right past one of his former students or teacher colleagues without being recognised, but reassuringly his basic features were the same; medium height, dark hair, prominent nose in a pale face.

Hermione had read _Jane Eyre_ and _Pride and Prejudice_ more times than she cared to admit, and was by no means blind to how one may be tempted into turning Snape into the wizarding world's equivalent of the thinking woman's troubled ideal.

To anyone who had actually lived in close proximity to the man, that was codswollop. Anyone who could be as petty as Snape had no business playing at romantic hero. He squabbled incessantly, refused to give an inch even when he was in the wrong, and Hermione had never had as much fun arguing with someone in her life.

He was unquestionably brilliant, and his mind worked quite differently to her own. Hermione may have left the Muggle world behind when she was eleven, but she had never abandoned its methods of reasoning through an argument logically. Snape's mind worked in leaps and bounds, irritatingly close to just knowing the solution to a problem. Sometimes it led him spectacularly wrong with no idea how to dig himself out of the hole, but infuriatingly he was right most of the time even though he scorned any requests to explain why.

Perhaps it was the same, slight deficiency of judgement that had led Hermione to eschew a simple, comfortable desk job at the Ministry that drew her attention to Severus Snape. Life was just more interesting when it also was observed through a pair of eyes so dark they may as well be black right next to her. Before today she hadn't quite articulated it to herself, but Hermione knew that she wasn't just going to sit by when this was over, content to let Snape slip out of her life again.

"Avery betrayed you, by the way," Hermione told him as they were strolling down the herbaceous border in the Laking Garden. The way she took pleasure in the way he looked genuinely baffled for approximately half a second was quite possibly bordering on the malicious. "He told me that it is Malfoy who's supporting the brethren who's fallen on hard times."

"I'm told there's no loyalty among scoundrels," he commented, looking out over the treetops beyond the terraced garden.

"Well, you ought to know," she said, sidestepping an errant turtle – the only visible reminder they weren't actually in England. That, and the lack or rain.

"Touché, Miss Granger," Snape replied with a slight quirk to his lip, which meant as much as a full-blown chuckle from someone else.

"How many times has Malfoy actually changed sides?"

"It clearly never occurred to your superior intellect that he has remained on the same side all the time. His own, to be precise."

"It did, actually, but recently I became aware of the error of my ways."

"Amazing," Snape drawled, very much in the grand manner of the absent Mr Malfoy. "You have succeeded in identifying Lucius' true affiliations where several iterations of the Wizengamot has failed."

"Well, I did have access to additional evidence."

"Such as?" If he were reduced to asking actual questions he must be curious.

"If he really was on his own side all the time, you wouldn't still be friends with him," Hermione said simply. Snape threw his eyebrows to the skies at her credulous nature, but refrained from any further comments.

Hermione had faced rather more Death Eaters than she cared to remember, and she took a fierce delight in knowing that Snape would make mincemeat out of Avery in a confrontation in about thirty seconds, with or without magic.

Lucius Malfoy may be intimidating and patrician out to the very tips of his fingers, but Hermione had faced him in battle and formed her own, not very flattering opinion of his mettle. She knew that, regardless of what they may have been like as boys at Hogwarts, Snape's steely moral compass would be steering the course of their strange partnership, Malfoy's personal concerns playing the second fiddle. Of course they would come into consideration, too; these were Slytherin masterminds, after all, to whom intrigue without a dozen motives was sadly flat.

Snape might be a bit of a bastard, but he was her bastard. Hermione was only a little surprised to find that she had aligned herself with him; not only against Avery, which was a given, but also against the wizarding establishment once they got back to England.

Hermione knew only too well how they could grab you and try to bend you according to their own purposes. The 'Golden Trio' had dominated the headline for years, despite their very earnest pleas to be left alone. Dead heroes were much more convenient than live ones. Snape had never played nice in his life and was unlikely to start living up to people's expectations now.

Well, they would have to go through Hermione Granger to get to him. The mulish expression on her face would have alarmed her friends, had they been there to see it. Ron, particularly, would have sensed the storm brewing. Hermione had never quite learnt how much was too much, and while she no longer believed in saving the world a S.P.E.W. badge at a time, she still possessed the same single-minded determination to make the world a better place and ensure that justice was done.


	5. Chapter 5 - Hooked Down

******At Some Actor's West Side Loft was an amazing beta for this, thank you again!**

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**Hooked Down**

**-oOo-**

* * *

Hermione shifted uneasily in her seat on the bus back to Detroit, trying to find a comfortable position despite the wedges of bank notes crammed into her pockets. Regardless of the welcome dent it would make in Lucius Malfoy's war chest she had no desire to be robbed; Malfoy probably wouldn't even notice, anyway.

Snape had walked her to the bus station; reminders that he had been schooled in the same old-fashioned courtesies that Malfoy and his ilk used like weapons always took her by surprise. As the bus had pulled out she had craned her neck to get a last glimpse of Snape. His black hair had been shining in the sun and he had looked almost like a statute, still and straight among the constant stream of people walking past; like a somber exclamation mark.

Hermione's hands were still tingling with the unfamiliar sensation of using magic; the corresponding feeling of elation had drained out of her veins by the time the bus reached the American border, and no one who saw her hunched shoulders and vacant expression would have recognised her from the Royal Botanical Gardens – not even discounting the sip of Polyjuice she had chugged back before bordering the bus.

The transformation had been even worse than usual, as if every cell in her body were trying to rebel against being returned to Lucinda Avery's miserable existence after being set free for a day. Unsuccessfully, Hermione tried to convince herself that it made no difference that their attempt to lure Avery to Hamilton had failed; they were still in exactly the same position as before, so there was no need to feel so miserable about it. As soon as she was back in the trailer park it seemed as if she never had left, and the mere sight of Avery made her want to curl up in a little ball with disgust and impatience.

Snape seemed to sense her dissatisfaction; that evening he seemed to go out of his way to keep her spirits up.

Well, in his own way.

"If I have to spend one more second submitting the English language to the abuse the dullards of this nation consider their accent, I will consider taking drastic steps," he announced after a long day on the trail of Avery. Apparently, his activities had mostly consisted of spending Lucius Malfoy's remittance in a string of dodgy bars, with Snape trailing behind in various disguises.

"Really? How quickly memory fades. To me, it seems like it was only yesterday you were complaining about the dimness of the students you had to teach, and how it would be impossible to find anywhere where the accumulated idiocy in the vicinity was greater than in the Great Hall at Hogwarts at mealtimes."

"That was clearly before I had the pleasure of travelling in the United States."

"As one of your former students, I'll consider myself vindicated then."

"Hardly. You were one of the most annoying children I ever had the misfortune to teach."

"Gee, thanks," Hermione said in her best American accent, and Snape shuddered.

"Cup of tea?" he asked when he had recovered.

"Thought you'd never ask."

Bandying words with Snape mightn't bring Avery even an inch closer to the border, but Hermione came away from his caravan feeling that she wasn't just treading water; somehow, he made her feel alive.

* * *

It had been a vague idea at the back of Hermione's mind for some time, borne out of her observations of how seamlessly Snape appeared to replace any other form of magic with a potion. Usually, Hermione would reach for her wand to cast a Charm without even pausing to consider any alternatives, which she quickly was finding had seriously impeded the efficacy of her preparations for this mission.

"There's no Summoning potion then, is there?" she asked Snape one night as he rummaged through his drawers with increasing irritability, searching for an elusive newspaper clipping about Bolivian witch markets.

"Don't be daft, of course there isn't," he admonished her.

"I had Slughorn in sixth and seventh year, remember?"

"I would expect even the dimmest of students to have grasped rudimentary logic in five years," Snape grumbled, without much heat. "How would you apply the potion to the object you'd be looking for without knowing where it was in the first place?"

"Never mind that now," she dismissed him, more interested in pursuing her new line of thought than in being unfairly castigated. "Do you know, I never realised how versatile potions could be when you have a Potions master at hand. America really is perfect for you, isn't it-"

Hermione's nebulous suspicions suddenly bloomed into certainty; she didn't have a scrap of evidence, but she was certain that her conclusions were sound.

"Tell me, this little consultancy outfit you mentioned you set up with Lucius Malfoy – You didn't happen to have been advising the US Department of Magic on the SALEM Act, did you?" she asked.

The SALEM Act – the Suitable Application of Limits on the Employment of Magic – placed strict limitations on the use of magic by unregistered wand holders on US territory. To use magic legally, Hermione would have to register and agree to submit to potentially have all her spells tracked. Breaching the regulations meant a trip to Alcatraz followed by immediate expulsion – and that was if she hadn't been doing anything more illegal than simply using unauthorised magic.

After the war, the Americans had implemented measures regarded with abhorrence in wizarding Britain. US wizards had remained strictly neutral during the war and thus escaped all the unpleasantness. In order to prevent similar events from occurring on their own territory, they happily submitted to limitations on the use of magic that would have made their British counterparts from both sides of the war rise up against the government in rare unity.

The idea that Snape had managed to twist the SALEM Act to enable him to work undetected in the US was preposterous; yet, Hermione could only think of one person in wizarding Britain that hadn't danced to his tune at one time or another. She wasn't absolutely certain that Snape hadn't managed to manipulate Dumbledore at some point, even if it did seem unlikely.

A bunch of panicking Department officials desperate to be seen to be taking action really wasn't that difficult, in comparison.

Snape neither confirmed nor denied her assertion, but then he was hardly going to admit to it. Hermione was left feeling decidedly impressed, and more determined than ever to actually get one over him some time. Surely he must have his off days too, no matter how adept he might be at hiding them?

* * *

Some nights later, Hermione woke up by someone banging on the door to the trailer. In some ways Avery was a surprisingly considerate drunk and he usually managed to get in with his own keys after a few attempts, so this was unusual. When Hermione registered that it still was bright outside and that she had nodded off on the couch, trying to catch up after losing out on a whole day's sleep in Canada, the persistent knocking made even less sense.

Avery had definitely told her that he would be late tonight; Malfoy's money still hadn't run out, it seemed. According to Snape, Avery was by no means too proud to take advantage of the $1 pint special at Dempsey's Irish Bar, despite his seemingly irrational hatred of the Irish.

When Hermione finally scrambled to the door, the person beating it so hard that the trailer walls were shaking turned out to be a very annoyed site manager. She wasn't best pleased at having to deliver a message to one of the residents. Hermione got the impression that it was more the imposition of actually having to get up from her couch than the fact that it was an urgent summons to the police station in Fenton that was the problem.

"But how am I supposed to get to Fenton?" Hermione asked the night (and hopefully Snape; she'd bet anything he was skulking somewhere within earshot), but the site manager took it as an actual question.

"Don't give a shit, honey. Your man, your problem," she said, before turning around with a huff – no doubt eager to shuffle back to her endless reruns of _Two and a Half Men_.

For a moment, Hermione was stuck on her minute porch watching the woman walking back to reception clad only in a tattered dressing gown and flip-flops. She found herself wondering what it would be like if this really was her life. With a start, she realised that she unfortunately was about to find out; there was no way this problem could be solved with magic.

"What has Avery done this time?" Snape's voice disembodied voice asked as Hermione was busy turning the sparse contents of the trailer upside down.

"I don't know," she informed him irritably. "I've only got enough money to bail him out for cutting in front of the queue at Wal-Mart, so I bloody well hope this isn't anything more serious."

"My resources are at your disposal, should you need access to additional funds," Snape offered, sounding formal as always when he was uncomfortable.

Hermione didn't need to see him to picture his face at that moment, regally detached. The offer, while not unexpected, was certainly gratifying, and some of the tension in her shoulders went away with the reminder that she wasn't alone in this.

"Thank you. I can't take it, though – he knows very well I've got no money."

A whole conversation seemed to go unspoken between them while she was rooting through Avery's sock drawer. Hermione knew as well as Snape did that it would be a relief even to her if Avery ended up in prison, and his restraint in voicing it prevented her inevitable angry retort. It was much more efficient to spend time with Snape than, say, Ron, she mused in a quiet corner of her mind; not having to voice every single thought freed up so much time to have more interesting arguments.

"Ha! I knew it," Hermione announced triumphantly, pulling out a roll of dollar notes from a jar of petrified instant coffee left behind by the previous occupant on the kitchen shelf. "Avery is exactly the type of person who'd have a little something squirrelled away, even if he didn't even want to pay the cable bill last week."

"Indeed," Snape agreed dryly. "He always had sweets left over from Christmas well past Easter."

Hermione forced her swollen feet into Lucinda Avery's best shoes, which still had the tattered Madame Malkin label clinging onto the sole.

Once, before the Industrial Revolution forced them off their lands, the Averys had been wealthy. What remained of the family fortune had mostly been squandered before Lucinda and Gilbert were born, but there had been enough even when Lucinda left Hogwarts to launch her in wizarding society alongside Lucius Malfoy, the Lestrange brothers and Doris Macnair. For all the good it had done her; Lucinda had only dangled at the fringes of the circles Lucius Malfoy had ruled like a king.

"Right," Hermione sighed, once she was respectably dressed. As soon as she had pulled her dress off the hanger Snape had nipped back to his own trailer, without informing her whether he was intending to return. She knew he couldn't come with her to the police station; it was a waste of time to be wishing that he could.

However, Hermione had at least counted on his help to figure out the knotty problem of transport. Avery had absconded with the only car in their household, a battered Volvo 740 that was almost as old as Hermione, and she knew very well there wouldn't be any buses crossing two counties at this time of the night.

"Are you coming?" a raspy female voice asked.

Hermione spun around, only to find her doorway invaded by the site manager again. When she had disappeared back to the trailer serving as reception she had seemed a woman determined to spend the next few hours in the company of Charlie Sheen, so this was rather a surprise.

Then again, the vowels did sound unusually clipped for her usual soft Southern drawl. Hermione didn't bother coming up with a surreptitious way of asking if it was really a Polyjuiced Snape facing her. She just raised one eyebrow in mute question, in that supercilious manner of his.

"Yes, of course it is I. Who else would it be?" the site manager snapped. "Are you coming, or are you planning on dawdling here all night?"

Hermione smothered an inappropriate giggle at the very Snape-ish response coming out of the site manager's button-shaped mouth, and tried to put her game face back on.

"Am I coming where? I was just trying to figure out how to get to Fenton and still have some money left when I get there."

Snape dangled a car key in front of her.

"Out of the goodness of my heart I shall condescend to give you a lift."

"I believe it's called a ride over here," Hermione pointed out, feeling immeasurably relieved at the prospect of being accompanied by Snape all the way to the Fenton jail.

* * *

Hermione ached with sympathy for the tired duty officer, who clearly had had enough long before she had turned up. They didn't have any jail facilities as such at the Aurory, but she knew well what it was like to work interminable night shifts while dealing with unreasonable members of the public. Trying to explain to irate wizards that breeding Acromantulas was indeed a criminal offence - yes, even if they were very small - didn't get any easier once it was past three o'clock in the morning.

While they were waiting Hermione had seen some of the other clients, for want of a better word, and she would have picked the would-be pet spider breeder over them any day. Snape had merely looked disdainfully at the riff-raff of Fenton county, the expression sitting awkwardly on the rounded face of the woman he was impersonating.

"You understand, ma'am-" the officer started again.

Yes, Hermione wanted to say, I understand. You've been on your feet for fourteen hours and now you have to talk to me, when all you want to do is to have another cup of vile coffee so you don't actually fall asleep when you sit down (after six months on the Auror training program even Ron had given in and started drinking coffee). They don't pay you enough for this, and tomorrow you'll have to get up after a poor day's sleep and do it all over again.

Hermione had definitely been away from her normal life for too long when she started missing her colleagues; even Barnes would be a welcome sight now, despite the halitosis and the endless stories about his divorce.

"No, officer," she said instead, inwardly cringing at the underhand tactics she was stooping to. Even if there was no honour among thieves, there certainly ought to be some between law enforcement officials. "Please explain again."

"Mr Clavering was stopped at a check-point while driving his vehicle on Interstate 96. As he refused to roll down his window-"

Hermione tuned out the tired recital of the circumstances of Avery's arrest under his American alias; her purpose for asking to hear it again wasn't due to her failing to grasp what had happened the first two times the police officer had told her.

Essentially, Avery had been arrested for being a posh twerp refusing to follow the instructions of Muggle police. By some miracle, his blood alcohol levels were under the limit once he was tested at the police station. As far as Hermione could ascertain the police didn't really have any reason to keep him under arrest, other than the fact that he had royally annoyed all the officers at the check-point and everyone who came into contact with him at the station.

For some reason, the allure of an honest-to-god British accent disappeared when its owner was using it to spew withering sarcasm over anyone in sight.

Hermione was slightly ashamed of herself when her dastardly tactics worked and the police officer decided to release Avery, rather than having to waste another ten minutes on explaining the increasingly flimsy excuses for his continued presence in a cell to his sister. She could even afford the pittance required for bail. Hermione vowed to herself that she would ensure Avery was safely in Azkaban by the time his case for wasting police time, or whatever they called it over here, came to trial; she refused to go through this again.

The journey to the abandoned check-point to collect Avery's car was even more awkward than her ten year Hogwarts reunion; at least there had been plenty of space between Draco Malfoy and Ron in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, rather than just a car seat. Some stiff words of thanks later (this night seemed to have strengthened Avery's aversion against Muggles even more, if that was possible) the still Polyjuiced Snape drove off and left them by the roadside.

Avery fished the car keys out of his pocket and then hesitated.

"Thanks, Lucy," he mumbled, his face turned away from her. "I couldn't-" He shivered suddenly, despite the heat lingering in the summer air. "You can't imagine what it was like, being locked up- There was a tramp in there with me, and the stench off him..." He shook his head as if to dislodge the smell. "Muggles everywhere, and I couldn't get _out_-" The last words were sharp with panic, and despite herself Hermione could sympathise; she knew exactly what it felt like to be stuck without magic, the utter powerlessness of it.

"You're here now, that's the important bit," Hermione said, trying to sound soothing. She had never been very good at it, even when she was herself.

"You know they'd put me in Azkaban if they could," Avery said, not listening to her. "I don't think I-" He trailed off, almost as if he were talking to himself. "I don't see how anyone could stand it."

Hermione had been to Azkaban; she had even written a strongly-worded letter to Kingsley afterwards, explaining how a civilised society could not allow retribution to dictate its penal policies. She had never been as close to understanding how Lucinda Avery could have abandoned everything to help her little brother evade justice as she was in that moment.

With visible effort, Avery seemed to banish his discomfort and abruptly got into the car. The highway was deserted; the only sound Hermione could hear were the crickets in the ditch beside the road and the car door slamming shut.

"Lucy? Are you coming?" Avery asked and her trance broke. Silently, she slipped into the front seat and with a roar from the ancient engine the car pulled away.

* * *

Hermione flinched.

"Sorry," Snape mumbled absently, as he smeared anti-bruise paste on to her cheek. "What was it this time?" he asked off-handedly; since she was leaning her head backwards to allow him space to work Hermione couldn't see his eyes, but she would have bet anything that he wasn't as nonchalant as his tone of voice would seem to suggest.

"Some bet, I think – the Kentucky Derby came in for some criticism earlier. Should have stuck with the English one."

Avery had been abjectly grateful after being bailed out. It hadn't lasted long.

"How much longer, Hermione?" Snape asked as he allowed her chin to drop down, the paste signalling its presence with a familiar tingling sensation.

"You know how much longer. As long as it takes," she said, trying not to let her irritation and powerlessness sneak to the surface. It was amazing how Snape could manage to be just as irritating as always, even when she still could feel the echo of his fingers on her skin.

"That's madness, and you know it."

"If it had been Rookwood we were talking about, fair enough, but this is Avery. It hurt more when Ron wheeled me into playing Beater when they were one player short for the annual Weasley Christmas Quidditch bash," she said flippantly, already regretting her words as she was speaking.

Hiding behind the ever-present smooth mask he had constructed in his twenties there was a stricken look on Snape's face, and he looked unaccountably young. There was a vulnerability about him that Harry had described to her long before, from the infamous memories; the face of the sallow boy who played with Lily Evans had looked almost the same as he was cowering in his parents' house.

Hermione cursed herself for forgetting again who exactly was patching her up as she was taking a break from her comfortable, boring, middle-class life. If she had known what she was going into she mightn't have chosen this particular escapade, but she had plenty of escape routes and could walk away the moment she had enough. She also had an inexhaustible supply of tea and grudging sympathy from Snape.

It would behove her to remember that most people in her situation weren't as lucky.

"I'm sorry." The shutters had come down and he looked more like a statue than a man, as always when he had revealed too much. "If it gets too much I'll walk away. I promise," Hermione continued. "But I did choose this. Just as you chose to go back to Voldemort when he returned – because the price is worth paying."

Snape stared at her, and she blushed. It hadn't sounded so pretentious in her head, but now that the words were out she was cringing at the comparison.

"I'm not saying it's the same thing, what you did was obviously in a different league- I don't claim to be a hero or anything-" Hermione stammered awkwardly, discomfort making her fidget in her seat. Whatever did she have to bring that up for?

"No, it's entirely different," Snape agreed harshly. "I was paying the price for what I had done. You don't owe anyone anything – rather the opposite, in fact – and hence you have no obligation to be here."

"Really? What's the price for redemption then?" Hermione asked, cocking her head to the side as she entered into the fray, discomfort forgotten. She had been wondering how to broach the subject again, and this opportunity was too good to pass up. "Ten rounds of _Crucio_? Twenty? Having to kill your best friend and convince all your other friends that you were a traitor in the process? Almost dying yourself?"

Her voice was surprisingly gentle as she asked him: "When will you see that you've paid enough, Severus?"

His lips turned into a thin, forbidding line as he turned away to put his jars and bottles into the battered chest they usually resided in.

There was just one more thing Hermione needed to say before Snape refused to discuss the subject any further.

"I swore an oath to pursue evil-doers and protect the innocent when I joined the Aurors. For what it's worth, I consider it my duty." The idea might have seemed antiquated and overly sentimental, had she not lived through a war before she was twenty. Maybe she would always be a soldier of sorts.


	6. Chapter 6 - Of Crooks And Men

**Lots of thanks to At Some Actor's West Side Loft for beta-reading!**

* * *

**Chapter 6**

**Of Crooks and Men**

**-oOo-**

* * *

Snape must have been speaking to Williamson behind her back. It was the only way Hermione could explain how she ended up having to convince Harry that she wasn't about to pack up and go back to England. Snape was a cunning bastard, she had to give him that - right after she kicked him in the gonads for ratting her out.

"I don't even know why they brought you in on this, Harry. You've nothing to do with my section at all, including this mission."

"Maybe Williamson was hoping that I'd be able to talk some sense into you."

"Because you're always so amenable when you get something into your thick skull." There was no need to bring up any examples, although the Department of Mysteries was hovering on the top of her lips as the ultimate example of Harry's foolhardiness.

"You know I've been working on that, Hermione."

"You're not on active duty anymore, you mean," she sniped.

"I still outrank you."

"You- For- I don't believe this!" she spluttered. "Harry Potter, are you seriously trying to pull rank on me?" Out of the corner of her eye she could see Snape wincing. She had no sympathy for him; it was about time he realised whom he had thrown his lot in with.

"Whatever it takes," Harry said flatly. "As long as you get out of there I don't care. Hermione, you know what you're like – can't you see it's like your N.E.W.T.s, all over again?" They never, ever mentioned her N.E.W.T.s; Harry must be seriously concerned if he brought it up.

"Nice try. Avery is a murderer, Harry. Don't you agree that he belongs in Azkaban?"

"Of course he does. I just don't see why my best friend has to be his punching bag in order to get him there."

"It's complicated."

"It really isn't," he said with exasperation. "Hermione, please come home. We'll come up with something else – you will come up with something. You always do. Just- I can't believe I'm saying this, but just listen to Snape, will you? I know I'm on the other side of the ocean, but if he's saying the same thing-" Hermione filed that particular nugget away for future reference, for when she would be dealing with Snape later.

With a monumental effort, she pushed her indignation down and actually managed to be reasonable with Harry, who had lost far too many people he loved and who really shouldn't have to deal with echoes of the Dursleys reminding him of his childhood. Snape wasn't the only person for whom her current situation struck a little too close to home.

"I'll be fine, Harry, I promise. If I wouldn't be, I'd be on the first flight home. I've got an emergency wand and Snape looking out for me-" Her would-be protector looked vaguely repulsed at being used to reassure Harry Potter, but Hermione ignored him. "I'll do what I came here to do, and then I'll come home. But not until then. We've been through worse, Harry."

"I know. Why do you think I want you to come home?" Harry asked wearily, and Hermione knew she had won the argument.

* * *

Stumbling, Hermione made it to the far end of the caravan before she collapsed. It hurt everywhere, but it wasn't really any worse than a very bad day at Auror training. That wasn't what made her want to curl into a little ball and just sink through the floor and disappear. It was the utter powerlessness of it all; even as she knew she could hit back, pull her wand out or just walk out, her own decisions had imprisoned her here just as efficiently as physical restraints could have.

Hermione clung on to the thought of Severus as a beacon through the darkness that had settled outside, and when Avery punctually blacked out at eleven it was almost with alacrity she rose, only to bend over as the soreness reminded her that just making it over to Snape's caravan would be no small feat.

Halfway across she almost gave up, but the sight of a shadow moving behind the curtain in the caravan she was heading for kept her going. If nothing else, Severus would have potions to make the pain go away; she tried to shake off the desperate need she felt just to see him, to be reassured by his presence. You were bound to be disappointed if you looked to Severus Snape for tea and sympathy. Nevertheless, he would brew her some tea at the very least, and on the strength of that thought she managed the last few steps.

In a very short space of time she was seated in his threadbare armchair, with a wide selection of potions being applied to her aching limbs and a steaming cup of tea at her fingertips. Severus was completely quiet as he tended to her. Hermione was quite relieved to be spared a lecture of how she only had herself to blame, and it was only when he ever so carefully was dabbing some de-puffing potion on her face that she happened to look into his eyes.

They were burning.

She pitied anyone who crossed him when he was looking like that. A shiver of almost-but-not-quite fear ran down her spine, and she almost jolted when she realised what she was feeling.

It was desire.

It seemed like Hermione Granger had finally tossed her goody-two-shoes former self aside when the thing she wanted most in the world was for Severus Snape to burn like that for her. She would give anything - almost anything - for him to be ablaze for her, instead of being consumed by barely repressed anger at the traces of Voldemort's tentacles still polluting the world. It was madness; she didn't even know if he had it in him to turn that fire into something else, but the possibility was irresistible.

Even then, Hermione knew this night was the end of something, although of what she didn't find out until afterwards.

Patiently, Severus went over every inch of her where Avery's fists had been before him. For once, very few words escaped from between his thin, colourless lips; their normal banter was absent and in its place there were just quiet requests to move a little or, now and then, a slight whimper from Hermione that made Snape flinch minutely.

"Do you know what-" he asked quietly while healing a cut across her eyebrow from Avery's signet ring, and Hermione shook her head before realising that it wasn't the best advised movement in her current position.

"No," she answered, almost in a whisper. Barely concealed menace seemed to be hanging in the air and she was reluctant to raise her voice in case it raised something else, even if she wasn't sure exactly what it would be.

There was no explanation for Avery's behaviour this time, no throw-away comments to account for his rage. Hermione felt a cloud of exhaustion set into her bones; not even the featherlight touch of Snape's long fingers could shake her mind awake. Actual sleep may be impossible, even in the quiet of the caravan, but mentally she had switched off hours ago.

She barely noticed when Snape finished patching her up and gently wrapped her in a blanket before making himself a cup of tea. Despite her expectations to the contrary she slipped into a fitful sleep, drifting to awareness ever so often only to find Snape observing her from his couch, a duller fire burning in his black eyes now.

None of them said anything as she laboriously made her way out of the armchair at dawn. There was no need; each knew what the other would say, as well as they ever would.

"Thank you," Hermione whispered as she slipped out through the door; as usual he didn't acknowledge it. It made her wonder if he would be there the next time. She couldn't have said if it was the thought of a next time or of getting by without Snape that caused a quick stab of desolation to shoot through her.


	7. Chapter 7 - Hook, Line and Sinker

******Thanks to At Some Actor's West Side Loft for beta-reading and general cheerleading; you were absolutely smashing! Any remaining mistakes are my own.  
**

* * *

**Chapter 7**

**Hook, Line and Sinker**

**-oOo-**

* * *

"Oi, you there!" a terribly familiar voice shouted outside the trailer, far too early the following morning. Hermione tried to sit up quickly but ended up folded in two, simultaneously trying to catch her breath and waking up from her restless half-sleep. She couldn't even see over the windowsill, but an ominous feeling told her who Avery was bellowing at outsides.

"Yes, you! Stop trying to sneak behind the bushes, I know you're there." Avery wasn't shouting anymore, but Hermione could hear him without difficulty; she had managed to drag herself to the open trailer door so she was in a position to observe him haranguing Severus in person.

Or his daytime persona, at least; she suspected that if Avery had known who he really was venting his anger at, he would have recoiled and run as fast as he could in the other direction.

Severus Snape in daylight was of the same build and height as his normal self; for frequent users of Polyjuice, it became a habit to assess strangers from those criteria. No one liked having to shrink and stretch their robes all the time. Muggle clothes were even worse, since the material hadn't been treated to retain the effect of charms for as long as possible.

Hermione knew that Snape's eyes were the same, too – a shade lighter perhaps, but whatever mask he happened to be wearing his gaze was equally intense. The main difference was his nose; in this disguise it was an elegant Greek number, instead of its usual aquiline bent. Snape still had long hair, albeit tied back, but Hermione would never have recognised him had she not known who he was.

Being dead probably worked to his advantage, too.

"What's your problem?" Snape asked belligerently and Hermione almost fell backwards. He sounded as if he had been brought up on the shore of Lake Michigan, speaking with just the right amount of nasal inflection. She had to stuff her fist into her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud, bruises be damned.

"What my problem is?" Avery asked incredulously, and Hermione could hear the extra 'h' in front of the 'what'; he always got more obnoxiously British the more annoyed he was. "I'll tell you what it is, you cheeky bastard!"

Having choked down her short fit of laughter, Hermione looked around. Curious faces were looking out from caravans all around; even the site manager had abandoned her TV to shuffle closer and watch, while prudently keeping a few caravans between herself and the unfolding scene.

"My _problem_ is-" Avery started, and Hermione suddenly saw him the way the Muggles must do. Obviously past his prime, but not looking nearly as ravaged as he would have without any magic in his blood. The slight tan he had acquired, despite his best efforts, helped making him look more like a rake than a dissolute.

There was no menacing air about him; nothing like Snape, whose mere presence was intimidating. Avery looked like the bloke you meet in the pub who always has a few good stories up his sleeves and somehow makes you pay for all the drinks, even if you were determined you weren't going to fall for it again.

Hermione knew exactly what he had done in both wars, and it was almost more terrifying to contemplate once she knew that Gilbert Avery was nothing out of the ordinary. No horrible childhood or defining tragedies had marked his card from the start; he was just a man who thought the world owed him something, and who couldn't care less about what he did in the pursuit of what he felt was due to him.

Men like him could be found anywhere in the world, and Hermione acutely felt the futility of her chosen calling. There was no way they could arrest all of them, much less stop them from trampling over everyone else as they grasped for what they thought they deserved. The Riddles of this world were easier to handle, in some ways – at least there weren't so depressingly many of them.

"My _problem_ is that you're sneaking around with my sister, and I won't be having it," Avery informed Snape as he advanced on him.

"I wouldn't know your sister if she jumped up and bit me," Snape said, making a perfect impression of someone accosted by a stranger but still holding onto his temper, albeit on a sufferance.

"Really? That's not what I hear from Wayne."

"Who the hell is Wayne?" Snape asked, his confused irritation definitely genuine.

"The neighbour," Avery informed him with an impatient nod towards the trailer two rows behind Snape's. "Met him in a bar last night. That's neither here not there," he quickly returned to his grievance, "and that's none of your business anyway. He's seen my sister coming out of your trailer, so there's no use denying it."

As if that reminded him of her existence, Avery turned his head towards Hermione hovering in the door to their trailer. She knew very well that her presence was unlikely to smooth the proceedings, but she was unwilling to miss a word.

"I'll deal with you later," he growled, "you daft cow. Seems you didn't get it the first time, did you?" He was ten paces away from Hermione, but she could still see his lip curl in disgust. "Sneaking around with Mu- men-"

Past Avery, Hermione saw Snape straighten imperceptibly, his spine somehow more ramrod straight than it had been before. When he still had been a teacher, most of his students had learnt to recognise the clues that he was about to strike. By now, they would have scurried away as fast as their little legs could carry them.

"Really? 'Sneaking around with men'?" Snape mimicked, sounding a little to English for a moment. Avery didn't appear to notice, even as he transferred his malevolent attention to Snape. "That's what you think she was doing? You Brits really are morons."

Hermione winced; what was he playing at?

"I know enough to deal with both of you, never you fear," Avery informed him, managing to sound more menacing than Hermione ever had heard him.

"The ugly bitch begged me not to touch her, but she liked it in the end. All the bitches do," Snape sneered. Even if she knew that he didn't mean a word of it, must find it repugnant to sully his lips with words so far removed from the essence of his character, it sent a chill down Hermione's spine and her skin crawled.

That was nothing to what Snape's sally did to Avery. He seemed to be reeling for a second before something between a growl and a cry escaped him, and he dove for Snape's throat.

In Avery's file at the Ministry, buried beneath reams of notes on suspected Death Eater meetings and raids, there was a single incident that had challenged Hermione's assessment of the man as an opportunistic sociopath solely interested in money and his reputation. When he was a young man, a girl of Avery's acquaintance - a Rosier with impeccable pure-blood credentials – had been assaulted after visiting a friend in St. Mungo's and getting lost in Muggle London afterwards. She had escaped with a black eye and a scare after managing to Apparate without a wand, but Avery had organised his only spontaneous Death Eater raid to punish the culprits.

Snape must have known about his fit of perverted gallantry; according to the report the Rosier Girl had begged, too, before she had managed to wrench herself free.

The moment before Avery hit him Snape's eyes met Hermione's; he raised his chin at her slightly, as if saluting her, and made no move to protect himself. When Avery barrelled into him he folded in two, both bodies hitting the ground in an ungainly heap with Avery's fists flying wildly.

Hermione flinched at the impact, throwing caution aside and abandoning her post in the door frame to rush to the melee. Cursing her lack of magic she tried to insert herself between the two, only to be tossed aside by Avery.

"Stay out of this, Lucy! I'll take care of him, don't you worry," Avery barked, roughly pushing her out of his way, but it was Snape who commanded her full attention.

He was looking away from her. He must know she was there, if only because Avery had stopped hammering retribution down on him for a moment. As Avery returned to his handiwork, landing a crunching blow to Snape's ribs, Snape seemed to fold into himself, hunching his shoulders and making himself smaller. Not a sound escaped him, and he still didn't even make a token effort to defend himself.

"Go inside, Lucy!" Avery bellowed, and Hermione pivoted on her feet, scampering to get back into the caravan as quickly as she could.

* * *

The heavy iron frying pan made a satisfyingly compact sound as it collided with the back of Avery's head. He collapsed in a pile of loose limbs and bloodstained fists.

Hermione knew very well what Snape had been doing, and she would take him to task over it as soon as she the immediate situation was dealt with. Unless they were all in custody by then.

An idiot would have been able to see that Snape had been offering himself to Avery as some sort of sacrificial lamb to spare Hermione.

She wouldn't be having with it. She wouldn't; Hermione mightn't be able to do anything about his past, but she was damned if she was going to stand by and see him just lying there, absorbing the blows as if it was another day at the office. Except that it clearly wasn't – she knew enough about what Harry had seen in Snape's memories to recognise that being beaten up must be a terribly familiar experience to him, in the worst possible way.

He wasn't alone anymore, and she couldn't bear to let him think that he was.

It didn't matter what she was to Snape, friend or possibly something else – there was no way Hermione Granger was going to watch him being beaten up, no matter what it meant for her mission. Very faintly, she was aware of something clamouring for her attention behind the white-hot anger and desperate concern on Snape's behalf - something about pots and kettles - but she dismissed it with barely a thought

Impatiently she heaved Avery to the side, after briefly checking that he wouldn't be waking up anytime soon, and then she could finally attend to Snape.

"Are you all right?" Hermione's hands scrambled everywhere, not knowing which part of him she wanted to check on first. Through some miracle Avery seemed to have been too distracted to have managed to damage any vital organs, although it was hard to tell with the way Snape was wincing.

"I'b fibe," Snape said thickly, trying to sit up; after a moment's hesitation Hermione helped him, making a sound somewhere between a snort and a sob.

"You're clearly not fine. Let me-"

Together they managed to stand up, after Snape had confirmed that he indeed was capable of doing so. All spectators had mysteriously cleared off, but Hermione was under no illusions; they would all be watching from behind twitching curtains and drawn blinds.

Swaying, they clung together and Hermione slung her arm around Snape's waist. Her first priority was to get him out of sight so she could check on him properly, and that meant getting him to the trailer she was sharing with Avery.

Snape's trailer would have been better, but that would mean dragging him another hundred yards. She may as well have tried to bring him across the Canadian border, for all the good it would do her.

* * *

Five minutes, a furtive run to Snape's trailer to fetch his Potions chest, and some rushed but effective dabbing and rubbing later, they regrouped. Snape's nose was still broken, Potions apparently not being quite equal to Charms in all instances, but he had stilled Hermione's hand when she made to pull out her carefully hidden wand.

"I would prefer not to alert the wizarding authorities until it's absolutely necessary."

"What about the Muggle authorities?" Hermione asked, unwillingly conceding the point. "A reported assault at Hearthside trailer park mightn't exactly be on top of their agenda, but I'm sure they'll be around soon."

Snape knocked back the contents of a bland-looking, unmarked bottle and shuddered all over; Hermione took a step closer to him in concern, but he recovered quickly and seemed to regain some colour in his cheeks.

"An unbiased observer would undoubtedly conclude that our best course of action would be to rid ourselves of this sorry mess in one fell swoop," he said, in his normal voice of studied indifference. His broken nose made his inflection slightly more nasal than usual, but didn't seem to slow him down unduly, suggesting to Hermione that he had previously dismissed more serious injuries as irrelevant.

Naturally Hermione had come to the same conclusion, but the way he was putting it sparked a faint hope that there was another way. Hermione and Severus could be in the Commonwealth in less time than it took to say 'Sod this for a game of soldiers'; all they had to do was to Apparate to the border and walk across, brandishing the passport of their choice (Hermione had three; Snape surely had more). They even had a choice of wizarding and Muggle border crossings.

However, unless Avery chose to cooperate they couldn't bring him with them; wards would detect any attempts at magical coercion and bring down the full might of the Wizarding Homeland Security on them. The Muggle authorities took a similarly dim view of anyone attempting to cross the border while unconscious or under the influence. It wasn't that Hermione hadn't tried to circumvent the imperative of making Avery cross over to the other side of his own volition, it was simply that she had proved incapable of coming up with a way around it.

"What would you conclude, then?" she asked Snape cautiously, admonishing herself not to get her hopes up.

"There is a way. You are, however, correct in your assertion that we have to get Avery out of here quickly, before the police gets here."

It was only when she was pushing Avery's legs into the back seat of the Volvo, not caring much that his knee banged against the door before she finally managed to squeeze it in, that she realised that Snape had distracted her by conceding that she was right and managed to avoid telling her exactly what his plan was.

The first step was obvious; they didn't want to leave a mystery behind for the local police, so it made sense to pack them all into a car and drive off, rather than Apparating straight from inside a trailer. As Snape hurriedly retrieved his belongings from his caravan, Hermione was bouncing in the driver's seat of the Volvo, scanning the surrounding trailers for any movement and listening for far-off sirens. It was still eerily quiet; the residents seemed to have suddenly decided that they were urgently required elsewhere this morning, which suited her just fine.

When Snape closed the car door with a snick and sat down in the seat next to her with a sports bag from Harry's Bowling Hall in Lucan on his knees, she was determined not to let him get away with bamboozling her again. Yet, they were almost at the copse of trees down the Flint road, where they were going to get rid of the car and Apparate to the border away from watchful Muggle eyes, before Hermione recalled herself.

She was starting to get an inkling of how he had managed to play both sides so successfully in the war.

"Wait! What are we doing?" she demanded, resorting to just blurting it out without thinking to avoid giving Snape a chance to redirect her attention again.

"Do you not trust my ability to achieve the desired outcome? Or are you not convinced of my good faith, despite your assurances to the contrary?"

"Yes," Hermione ground out, fully aware of what he was doing but unable to resist the imperative to assure him that she did trust him, would always trust him. "I do trust you, but can you blame me for being suspicious when you won't tell me what you're up to?"

"There doesn't appear to be any need to do so – you will shortly get a practical demonstration," he loftily informed her.

Hermione hit the brakes a little harder than necessary, and she could hear Avery tumbling off the back seat as they came to a stop among the trees on the little dirt road that ended with a whimper in the middle of nowhere.

The sound of sirens was so faint at first that Hermione barely could make it out, but it grew stronger alarmingly quickly. Aided by Snape, she hauled Avery out of car and dumped him on the dusty ground, next to the neat little pile of belongings retrieved from Snape's trailer. They were treated with rather more reverence than the unconscious wizard.

"Now for the car," Snape ordered and Hermione exploded.

"No! You will tell me what we'll do next right now, or so help me Merlin-"

"Fine," Snape said as if it was a dirty word. It probably was, to him – you didn't need to know him very well to realise that he despised sounding casual.

"Fine?"

"Fine, Miss Granger," he echoed sardonically. "We will first implement emergency plan- 6C, I believe." The level of sarcasm was reaching unprecedented heights; Hermione had to admit that it was a little much to have insisted on numbering their various contingency plans, in retrospect. Still, it saved time. 6C consisted of a car crash with fabricated remains, ensuring that the Muggle police didn't waste their time searching for the Averys. Clearly, it would be prudent to add Snape's alias to the wreck in this instance, to ensure that no further avenues of enquiry remained for the Muggle police.

"Makes sense," she admitted. "Then what?" The sirens were getting very close now; it was too much to hope for that no one would have seen in which direction they had driven off from the trailer park.

"Then we Apparate to the border with the useless lump over there and use my special talents to get across. Quick, we don't have much time!"

Damn him; if he hadn't wasted so much time making it clear how unreasonable she was being, Hermione would never have let Snape get away with such a pitiful attempt. As it was, she was forced to acquiesce or her acquaintance with the American legal system would become much more intimate than she cared for.

Squaring her shoulders, she pulled out her hidden wand. Hermione couldn't help but smile as she felt the comfortable, worn wood resting against her palm again.

"Ready?" she asked Snape, who also had produced a wand; it was an intimidating-looking dark piece of wood that gleamed in the soft sunshine. It was hard to remember that it was only nine o'clock in the morning.

"Ready," he replied, meeting her eyes with a steady gaze with something lurking at the bottom. Was it excitement?

* * *

Hermione landed in an ungainly heap, her chest heaving.

"That- was- close!" she panted.

As usual, Snape didn't appear to have a hair out of place; it was enough to dislike the man, even disregarding his appalling personality, and yet Hermione couldn't seem to stop smiling at him as she scrambled up from the ground.

"Timing the explosion of the petrol tank with our Apparition was a nice touch," he remarked, brushing some ash off his shirt sleeve and letting go of Avery's waist. Severus hadn't left anything to chance; Avery's unconscious state was now due to some unnamed potion rather than the after-effects of Hermione's liberal application of the frying pan to his skull. He was having rather a rough morning of it; neither Hermione nor Snape were overly considerate with his limp body.

"The Department of Magical Law Enforcement did prove quite educational," Hermione replied. "It's not all about chasing enchanted dust bins, you know."

"Indeed," Snape said, and Hermione couldn't have said what it was that told her that he was enjoying this as much as she was. It was intoxicating to finally be doing something; if it entailed blowing things up, so much the better.

"Now what?" she asked, mindful of where they were standing. It may look like a peaceful glen hidden in the forest, but they were half a mile from the border and it would be naive to assume they would remain undetected for long. In Hermione's briefings, the British Ministry had been reluctantly impressed by the sophisticated Muggle protections along the border; it may be possible to cross undeterred, but without insider knowledge an attempt would be most unwise.

Snape pointed his wand at her and then at Avery, Disillusioning them without as much as a word. Hermione returned the favour, knowing that any cameras watching them would be irreversibly scrambled by the magic in their vicinity, which was practically an engraved invitation to the Muggle Homeland Security.

It was still better to be invisible, even though it meant she couldn't see that undefinable something lurking in Severus' eyes any longer.

"What do we do now, then?" she asked, after casting a Muffliato which earned her a sharp glance from Snape. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't repress the excitement in her voice completely, and she knew he would take advantage of her earlier anger having evaporated.

"We fly over it," Snape said, doing something complicated with his wand to make the shimmery form Hermione knew was Avery levitate a few inches across the ground, tying them together with something that sounded like a chain. "May I?"

"Wait- You, what?" Hermione stuttered and felt him taking her arm, just after an indefinable sensation of softness enveloped her. She could actually feel herself being jostled by the wind before Snape's comforting grasp steadied her.

Feeling his warm hand around her wrist proved sufficiently distracting that she didn't notice they were rising quickly, until they were almost level with the tree tops.

"You can't be serious," she managed to squeeze out. Hermione seemed to have left her stomach behind on the ground; she was resolutely refusing to look down, but she was all too aware of the terrifying distance to terra firma beneath her.

"I clearly am, one would think being two hundred feet up in the air-"

"Don't say it," Hermione pleaded, latching on to his arm so she could sling her arms around his waist and hold on tight. It was even comforting to feel Avery gently bobbing against her legs; anything to take her mind off the void beneath them.

"Is the inestimable Miss Granger still afraid of heights?" Snape asked, having the gall to sound amused.

"If you think this is funny, you can go back to being dead. See if I care," Hermione moaned, and only the fact that his chest was shaking slightly revealed that he still was laughing at her.

By her reckoning they had been in the air for about two minutes, or several centuries, when their ascension gently came to a halt. That left them another three minutes before the expected arrival of a SALEM enforcement team tracking the use of unauthorised magic.

Hermione clung on to Snape with renewed vigour as he did something with his wand arm to make them tremble like aspen leaves in the wind.

"We seem to have hit the optimum height," he deigned to inform her, once the shaking had died down and her grasp had relaxed somewhat. "We may as well break through here as higher up. There doesn't appear to be any material difference to the wards."

Yet again, Hermione was almost struck mute with stupefaction. Almost.

"You're planning to - You- We can't break through to the Canadian side, that's simply..." she stammered, wishing very much that she could see Snape's face.

"We have exactly two minutes before the cavalry gets here and Avery slips out of our grasp, Hermione. Would you prefer spending them instructing me how impossible the whole venture is, or trying to achieve something-"

He hadn't even finished the sentence before Hermione's Reducto bounced off the wards and did something unspeakable to a tree top far below; the splinters bounced off the soles of their shoes.

"Full marks for effort, although I would have to mark you down for poor execution," Snape remarked before he joined into the fray.

"This is useless," Hermione gasped, at the end of a full minute spent bombarding the invisible border wards with every spell they could think of.

For the first time since she had disposed of Avery's active participation in the proceedings, Snape appeared to be less than completely confident in his chosen course of action.

"We have enough time to leave the dunderhead here for the SALEM squad to find before Apparating to an official crossing," he offered, and there was a hint of defeat to his voice for all that it sounded as controlled as always. "They don't know who we are."

"No," Hermione objected. "That's not what I meant." The words were tripping over each other in her haste to get them out before it was too late. "Together, on the count of three-" She aligned her wand arm with his and counted down: "One, two, three-"

Their Muffliato proved woefully inadequate to muffle the sound of their combined Reductos hitting the border wards, and it felt like the sound could be heard for miles. They were knocked back by the force of the impact, but Snape threw them forwards just as quickly.

By some miracle they didn't hit anything, even when surging past the area where their diagnostic spells had indicated the border was. Only when she had confirmed that they really were in Canada, using a complex little tracking spell Draco Malfoy of all people had taught her, could Hermione breathe again, despite still being several hundred feet up in the air.

"We did it," she announced, the enormous grin on her face quite audible in her voice which was bubbling with suppressed triumph.

"An operation executed in the finest traditions of the Order of The Phoenix," Snape said, as they drifted gently towards an opening in the trees on the Canadian side, indistinguishable from the glade on American soil.

"Are you trying to tell me that the Order was run by the seat of Dumbledore's pants, pieced together with spit and Spello-tape?" Hermione asked, giddy with laughter and relief and their narrow escape.

"Precisely," Snape breathed in her ear, and every little hair on her neck stood to attention as they gently hit the ground. The familiar trickle of the Disillusionment charm ran down her spine, and she could suddenly see Snape as well as feeling him.

"Just so you know, this is not the end of it," she told him, too happy to bother being cagey about it.

"Isn't it?" Snape murmured and she felt delightful shivers ripple down her back all the way down to her knees. Tightening her grip around his waist, she rose to the top of her toes to look him straight in the eye. It would be foolish in the extreme to leave anything to chance. She had never been very good at being subtle, in any case, and something told her that Snape would appreciate forthrightness.

"Severus Snape, I promise I'll haunt you until you give in and agree to go out with me. And I mean properly: looking like ourselves, somewhere we actually want to be."

Hermione could hear the soft pops of Apparition all around them and Canadian magical law enforcement officers were suddenly running towards them. Severus paid the approaching wizards no heed, but seemed to focus all his attention on her face. Reverently, he stretched out a long finger and ever so softly caressed the side of her cheek.

"In that case I've no choice but to surrender immediately, do I?" Uncertainty briefly shone in his eyes. "Miss Granger, are you _sure_?"

"Absolutely positive."

"Not only am I officially dead, I'm also two decades your senior and by all accounts a rather nasty piece of work. You would be far better off with-"

She kissed him; it was clearly the only way to shut him up.

"No, I wouldn't," she told him firmly when he seemed to be thoroughly subdued. "If you still think you have some debts to pay, you can do it by having to put up with me. A fitting punishment, I think you'll agree."

His cheeks were slightly pink and he looked a little off-balance; Hermione decided that a flustered Severus Snape was possibly the most delicious thing she had ever seen.

"I don't- I find myself quite unencumbered by past obligations," he told her, a little more rushed than his normal measured delivery. "Enduring your company has proved remarkably illuminating in that regard." Translated from Snape-speech to English, that was quite possibly the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

"Good. Then you'll be getting more of it," she said, leaning in towards him again; not feeling quite as bold as she endeavoured to sound, but unable to resist the attraction of the wildest gamble she had ever undertaken. When he let his long fingers cradle her head and tilt it slightly upwards (_why_ was she still looking like Lucinda Avery; if there was ever a time she wanted to be herself-), and finally kissed her back of his own accord, Hermione realised that she was in far over her head. It was glorious. It was better than hunting Death Eaters, better than getting all O's in her N.E.W.T.s, better than -

The embarrassed coughing of a Canadian official recalled them to reality, and the tedious process of handing Avery over into custody and officially resurrecting Severus could commence. Through the long day, they caught each other's eye ever so often. Every time, Hermione had to stop herself from grinning like a fool in the middle of a discussion about Habeas Corpus or custody arrangements.

Severus had no such difficulties, but she could see something burn in his eyes that made her feel like she was about to take flight; gravity didn't seem to be able to hold her fettered to the ground anymore.


	8. Epilogue: Nineteen Months Later

**Epilogue**

**Nineteen Months Later**

**-oOo-**

* * *

Nicodemus Nibbs looked like the sky had fallen in; judging by the state of his flat, the assumption wasn't entirely unreasonable.

"Who- Where- What-" he spluttered incoherently at the intruders, who currently were busy turning his belongings upside-down in supreme unconcern at his sudden return.

"Darling, we seem to have company," the shorter of them blithely informed her companion, who seemed entirely preoccupied with smearing a viscous blue liquid on his hands. When it appeared to be done to his satisfaction, he started rubbing his palms together.

The woman – the uninvited visitors had their backs turned on him, but even before she had spoken Nicodemus had decided that anyone who didn't cut hair like that off before it went feral must be a woman – was rifling through what looked very much like the cigar box he kept his paperwork in. The one that usually was hidden under several layers of very nasty wards indeed.

"Who are you?" he finally managed to squeeze out.

"Oh, do excuse our manners," the taller one replied with contempt he didn't even bother hiding. Something in the chilly, meticulous way he spoke stirred Nicodemus' memories, which were aided further by the almost empty glass bottle parked on top of the fireplace.

"You're- Oh, bloody hell, it's Snape and Granger!"

"Give the man a cigar, Hermione. Or maybe not – in his infinite stupidity, he decided to store incriminating documents instead of Havanas."

"One despairs of the criminal classes sometimes," the woman replied, still with her back turned to Nicodemus, who wasn't having a very good day.

"Oh, no..." he moaned. "Not you two - I heard what you did to Uxley..."

"Severus, dear, it seems like we have acquired a bit of a reputation." Granger had the gall to sound amused, and Nicodemus finally recalled that he was in possession of both a wand and a fairly nasty repertoire of spells. Before he even had time to raise his wand at Snape – the man had killed Dumbledore after all, he was clearly the bigger threat no matter how clever Granger was supposed to be – he was hit by a Stunning spell and crashed to the floor.

The last thing Nicodemus heard before losing consciousness was that odious voice; it reminded him of Hogwarts and dank dungeons and failing Potions again.

* * *

"Almost adequate this time; at least you are showing some improvement on your wandless spells. I had almost given up."

"You're one to talk – you've had twenty years more to practice! Really, Severus," Hermione replied in exasperation, smirking a little at the way he still flinched when she reminded him of the years between them. It served him right for being condescending, the bastard.

A book zooming past her temple and straight into his hand made her duck, and wiped the smirk right off her face.

"Severus, not where I'm working," she complained half-heartedly. "I'm delighted that our Summoning potion works, but it's really getting on my-" Severus was busy jotting something down in a tattered moleskin notebook and Hermione could tell he hadn't heard a word. Their mission today was effectively complete with the apprehension of Nibbs. At the moment, they were looking for something to lead them to whoever was behind all this; a bonus, as it were. As the case was finished there was no reason why she couldn't sidle up to Severus to kiss him; that would definitely grab his attention. Nibbs' flat made her skin crawl, however, so she decided against it; it wasn't the place for anything even vaguely intimate.

Hermione had never been the type for public displays of affection anyway, not even at Hogwarts. Ironically, if she had met up with someone for a furtive bout of snogging back then it would probably have been Severus who would have caught them and doled out the inevitable bout of detentions. There was a thought: if anyone deserved some belated snogging under the Quidditch stands at Hogwarts, it was Severus. If she had a word with Minerva first, they could sneak in at night the next time they had a few weeks' leave from the Ministry-

"Stop plotting, woman."

"I am capable of doing two things at a time, you know," she replied, but in a tacit admission that she had been slacking off somewhat Hermione attacked Nibbs' haphazard collection of tickets, notes and newspaper clippings with renewed vigour. As she was reading through a particular puzzling account of a pair of escape artists found dead in Swindon (could Nibbs possibly have been involved and held on to the clipping as a trophy?), she absent-mindedly twisted the delicate silver-coloured ring on her left hand round and round.

It was still a surprise to find it on her hand; she had only been wearing it for two weeks. Thinking of the ring and what it entailed was a serious threat to her efficiency, however, so she buckled down to do some work and put the circus artists aside as an unexplained anomaly for the time being.

It was Severus who broke the companionable silence next, with a sharp intake of breath that made Hermione toss the train ticket to Perth for the 24th of November aside and traverse the room a little quicker than the average Muggle would have been able to.

"What is it?" she asked gently, taking in his stricken face.

"Look – the idiot has written it all down. If it wasn't for the execrable handwriting he may as well not have taken any precautions at all."

Hermione tried to decipher the almost illegible scrawl on the dirty piece of parchment proffered by Severus, and burst out laughing.

"Park Ridge Mobile Home Park in Alexandria, Louisiana," she announced, after confirming for herself that Nibbs really was stupid enough to have written down the name and address of the mastermind of the criminal network he belonged to. Bubbling over with laughter, Hermione tried and failed to remain coherent; the stony expression on Severus' face made it impossible to stay serious. "This time we can get matching tracksuits!"

"I fail to see how this can be considered even remotely amusing," he announced in frosty tones.

"And to think that our pardons for the last time only came through in March!" Hermione was unstoppable. "We can even get a permit to do magic this time-"

"The beer is horrible and the food even worse." Severus closed his eyes as if remembering something excruciatingly painful. "Not to mention the detestable perkiness pervading all aspects of social interaction-"

"You're not coming then? I could talk to the Ministry..." Hermione rudely broke off his reminiscences and Severus looked affronted.

"Of course I'm coming. Which part of 'for better or for worse' did you not understand?"

"The bit where it says it's valid before we actually get married, apparently."

Severus looked at her with a familiar expression of exasperation and tenderness, and suddenly she didn't really care that Nibbs seemed to accept living under conditions even a troll would have deemed unacceptable. Of course Severus would consider a vow to love and cherish her binding before he even had taken it; it would have been foolish to expect anything less.

When they broke apart Hermione was rather breathless and they still had several hours' work left before they could dump Nibbs in the arrest at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but the slight blush tinging Severus' throat made it all worth it.

**-oO THE END Oo-**

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******I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it! Reviews are most appreciated :)**


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